Boxou

yeah dude, no room for samaris, retsos and siopis but you somehow included 2nd league bench warmers like bouchalakis, vellios and gianniotas and the biggest bust and most overhyped player in the recent years in greece - pelkas. amazing...

i'd like for once to see karnezis manolas papadopoulos sokratis torosidis samaris tachtsidis stafylidis fortounis mitroglou donis btw...bosnia will not play behind close doors...they will just play in another stadium inside the country..

are we for real now..? are we really concerned about cyprus' approach for the game..? like we couldn't beat them even if they had something to play for..now, that they don't have anything to play for it will be easier to grab a win..mitroglou will be back..so will karelis..if we play at 70% like we did against belgium we'll escape with a victory.. belgium is beating bosnia.. ireland are drawing wales.. and we're doing what we have to do vs cyprus and gibraltar..

two wins against belarus (0-2, galanopoulos and koulouris the scorers) and moldova (5-1, galanopoulos, manthatis, androutsos and koulouris twice)..this seems to be a rather talented youth team, probably the most talented after that 2012 generation which reached the final in european championship (and quite better than the side who reached the semis in 2015)..let's take a look at some players there evangelou (pao), retsos (leverkuzen), katranis (saint ettiene), tsimikas (willem), androutsos (olympiakos), galanopoulos (aek), lamprou (panionios), chatzigiovanis (pao), manthatis (pas giannena), limnios (paok), koulouris (paok), donis (stuttgart) and some other dudes who play for the likes of asteras tripolis, xanth and kerkyra (starters there). obviously retsos and donis didn't play in any of the games but if the team does qualify for the europea championship (currently leading a group of moldova, belarus, czechia, croatia and san marino, huge chance to win that) then we might witness one of the best teams in years in 2019 championship. by then most of these players will have already developed because they already start or come off the bench for respective clubs.

we don't need to go into details on what happened to previous games, a lot of ifs there. (if kapino had saved lukaku's 90min goal, if mantalos had scored in the fast break against bosnia, if we had beaten estonia etc etc) the point is that there are 3 groups at the moment which can easily miss the playoffs with REASONABLE results. no need to be desperate and hopeless since the other groups should worry more about that. for example we have just to beat cyrpus and gibraltar while bosnia to drop points to one of belgium and estonia..ireland-wales are playing each other in that group, so do netherlands against sweden and scotland against slovakia and slovenia. all are direct competitors for the 2nd place and could easily missed as it's been pointed out..

Cyprus has no hopes after their loss to Estonia..they will need a weird combination of results including Greece losing to Gibraltar and also them winnig in Brussels..Cypriot people in social media already say that we dont have to worry, they will gift us the victory. Although I believe it won't be a trashing but also not a close game. Something like 0-2.

we want 4 results in the first place.. bosnia-beligum = bosnia NOT to win cyprus-greece = greece to win wales-ireland = draw greece-gibraltar = greece to win this way we're in the 8 best teams as if wales and ireland tie up, then they will be a couple of points behind us. that's the simplest scenario, the one which follows is the one i pointed out yesterday with england's group. it's more simple than we thought only 2 days ago basically.

i'm sure there will be some talk between the federations, if the results go our way (at the moment they do) but also if belgium has managed to hold bosnia as their game will be finished once our game kicks off. maybe some kind of payment that federations usually do, remember croatia in 2011 awarding a "πριμ" to georgia if they were to beat us or in 2013 when we did the same thing to lithuania. qualification to the final stage means we're going to make tons of money as a bonus, it's a win-win situation even though i don't believe something like that is going to happen, they will simply let greece dominates the game by any means. i;m sure in case we score, cypriot fans will celebrate our goals.

karelis is expected to be back in a few weeks, other than that we don't have any other player injured at the moment.

more or less, then our only hope is england's group with slovakia, slovenia and scotland battling for the 2nd place. table as it stands in this group 1.england 20 points (+13) 2.slovakia 15 points (+8) 3. slovenia 14 points (+6) 4.scotland 14 points (+4) remaining fixtures october 5th; england-slovenia (english win) scotland-slovakia (scottish win) table; england 23 scottland 17 slovakia 15 slovenia 14 october 8th; lithuania-england (result doesn't matter) slovakia-malta (slovakian victory) slovenia-scotland (draw or slovenian win, both work) table; england 26 slovakia 18 scottland 17 or 18 slovenia 15 or 17 we're also in with this as we'll have 19 points. that's the only group other than ireland's one where the things are more simplified..the next one is ukraine/iceland/turkey and for that there will be needed more difficult results.

to cut it short, we'll need wales-ireland game in october to end as a draw, and serbia not to lose tomorrow in dublin. this way we're in.

περίμενε για το παιχνίδι των ιρλανδών αύριο..αν ΄φέρουν 2 χ με σερβία και ιρλανδία είναι έξω. η οποία είναι και η μόνη μας ρεαλιστική ελπίδα αυτή την στιγμή, μαζί με το γκρουπ τών σλοβάκων/σλοβένων/σκοτσέζων. παίζουν μεταξύ τους στα τελευταία 3 και θα χάσουν βαθμούς.

we'll have a more clear picture after today's games, i don't rule out the chance for that team to be greece but there are some groups which are a total mess..take for example ireland's group, montenegro's, nothern ireland's. ireland need to take at least 7 points from their 3 remaining games vs serbia (h), wales (a) and moldova (a). if they get 6 or less they're out. montenegro are playing romania (h), poland (a) and denmark (h) and they also need to take at least 7 points. again not the most possible scenario. nothern ireland have an easiet schedule with norway (a), germany and czechia (both h). they need 3 points to be guaranteed 2nd, but how possible would be for a team wich couldn't break san marino's defence and needed 75 minutes, to score against these teams? likely the group with england, scotland, slovenia and slovakia has 3 teams targeting 2nd place and most of them play each other in the upcoming games.. don't be that sure it's going to be us..we have 2 more or less guaranteed wins in cyprus and gibraltar, and if belgium holds bosnia it will be us in the second place..we also have a game vs gibraltar where we'll score more than 6 goals if needed in the last matchday..we'll be on par with many other teams at that time and we'll have the opprtunity to smash gibraltar and beat our opposition to goal difference. most of the groups are not done yet, and there are more difficult games than you might think..

a point today wouldn't change anything, we'd still want bosnia not to beat belgium. the only positive thing that would come out of the draw would be the pshycological boost and 1 valuable however point in the race of the 8 best placed teams, in order not to come out as the worst of all even though i believe that this team will not be us.

lazaros should surely be here..it's a crime that he is not when there are no better wingers than him...i hope skibbe will call him up in the upcoming games...also aek signed kone...we'll see if he performs there because i think he can be a solid option like showed in the world cup when he was one of our best players...perhaps petsos too who signed for rapid wien..

it doesn't make sense to claim they will beat belgium because belgium will not be motivated. they need to be seeded in the world cup so they will not go out to lose. as mentioned before even their b side is actually better than more than half on national teams in the world, let alone europe. it's not going to be easy for bosnia. they will have to play offensive football which definitely doesn't help them. i can see belgium beating a team that conceded 3 goals to cyprus and which also scored 4 against them in the first round. if not a win then a draw is still working.

we'll have both mitroglou and karelis for the last 2 games unless some injury happens. what i'd like to see in these games karnezis torosidis sokratis manolas tzavellas/stafylidis samaris zeca/tachtsidis stafylidis/karelis fortounis donis mitroglou and hopefully we'll see some of lazaros in the squad.

that's what i think too. today greece started with a defensive scheme although we didn't play that defensively as i thought. but in any game that any team would go all out attact like bosnia will have to do vs them, they're going to be abused defensively. if i had to predict i'd say 1-1 or 1-2 simply because of the lack of interest belgium might show. but surely it's not logical to expect that bosnia will beat with easily.

still that game might not even matter if they don't beat belgium.

estonia are drastically improved so thinking a win against them is guaranteed is wrong, they just proved at to us. especially when we're talking about an away game. athens4 aside from mitroglou there's karelis.

i just said that our fixtures are too easy compared to some other groups. if we get to 19 points by winning the next 2, i think one of group c, d, e, f and i will provide the worse runner up. look at their 2nd placed teams' schedule and you will come to the same conclusion

looking how the things are right now in other groups, i see at least 3-4 of them with higher chances than us to end up as a worse second placed team.

bosnian defence is horrendous, they can't keep belgium at zero even if they field their b side. they'll have to go all out attack and that's a good sign considering belgium will have many chances to score. like i said even a draw would work for us. what we have to do is to beat cyprus which is possible after their loss today and gibraltar. don't underestimate estonia, they're hosting bosnia it tallinn in the last matchgame.

calm down, how likely you think it is for bosnia to beat belgium at home without fans? even a draw is still in favour of us. what we have to do is just to beat cyprus and gibraltar.

i don't see how we're going to win this one but playing on the counters suits us better. we should better win tomorrow to lock the second place and minimize any chance we have to end up as a worse runner up which is quite possible if we lose or even draw vs belgium..somehow we kicked our chance away by drawing estonia at home, congrats.