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Nations League: Greece vs. Hungary (Groupama Arena, Budapest) - September 11, 2018


Argy

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We have looked heaps better in possession over the last 2 years. Bouchalakis and Kourbelis are the reason for that. Bouchalakis didn't have a great game as even I got frustrated with him. But he and Kourbelis kept the ball well and we're the reason we kept possession well. But we need to penetrate the defence more. 

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bravo @Alphonse speaking some sense.

All the guys getting hammered for a poor performance (donis lazaros etc) were the same guys these posters wanted starting the game. Now that we lost (through bad luck more than poor play imo) it's "we are so embarrassing, can't believe Skibbe is still in a job, I called it Lazaro is s%$#!, donis is koutsianikoulis 2.0. It's quiet funny

We are playing much better football than we have in a few years, quality of the opponent probably has something to do with that but never the less. Happy with how we are looking but I pray Mitro is fit in a month when we have our next round of matches because without him we struggle (not exactly a news flash) 

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Our next game is against Hungary at home and we now have put ourselves in a MUST WIN situation, Lose and we are done. Since  Not sure why we play Hungary a 2nd time before we play Finland...That means Finland will most like get to 9 points since they will be playing Estonia next again. 

Edited by J1078
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I disagree with anyone syaing we weren't a threat.

this match we were unironically much better than vs Estonia Offensively.

Pelkas shot that got saved.

Mitroglou header barely out.

Mitrogou shot from the penalty area.

FOrtounis I think? Shot that got into corner and then again another manolas header.

And what did you see from the Hunns. One funny goal at first half that was fast equalized and then 1,5 minute of domination which led to a goal. I don't think they really have ANY OTHER highlights.

And although Hunns are nothing too decent they are not Kafenio. 

 

The same people crying about "better football but bad result" are the ones who were "not convinced" when Skibbe was winning Cyprus and Estonia with 0,5 goal and that it's not only the result that matters it's the appearance of the team.

Greeks are always unprepared in September. I don't remember many good official matches weve played in September.

 

Skibbe realised that klwtsoskoufi with Torosidis crossing hoping Mitroglou gets a shot was not good.

 

Now as for the players that get bashed mostly:

Tzavellas definately had a bad match but Lykogiannis wasn't good either. Maybe defensively he was more on it but his crosses were meh at best. Stafylidis is both offensively and defensively solid. He can not be replaced by no Lykogiannis no Tzavellas no Retsos.

Fortounis Pelkas good

Lazaros, don't start again please. He was TERRIBLE. Someone here said he was trying lol. He was falling whenever touched. Neymar #2. bad passes, just a shot from outside the box not on target. That's your 90 minutes so praised Lazaros. Team needs to be Donis Fortounis Pelkas in the mesoepithetiki line. Noone else deserves a spot for now.

Mitroglou was unready and protecting himself. Good for him that he did come on 2nd half in a match that is not yet crucial. It was obvious yet he was more threatening than Donis as CF and definately more than Bakasetas. He is the best one we have so bashing him there is no need. He is no Ronaldo so he ll do F*** ups as well but he is the best we have no point to ask him out when the team can't really work without him.

Bouchalakis I stated previously as well, the guy is liked from Olympiakos and Skibbe because he is not afraid to make the risky pass. If such a pass happens it can unlock a defence and make defenders shaky. Of course risky passes mean also fail passes. The fact that he does not seem to be psychologically affected by his bad passes is not bad. We need such a player not afraid to take a risk playing vs minnows. YES both Hungary and Estonia and even Finland are MINNOWS for us. And we ll prove it by finishing top of the Group.

Kourbelis I like. In fact I think he and Bouchalakis compliment each other. The team is rolling better than previous qualifiers so I think they re the reason for that.

Torosidis was not bad actually. His age shows but he was not bad.

Barkas tried nothing to comment on him.

So overall I want Lazaros out. Skibbe why bash him? He put a line up you all agreed to like. He had a 3rd sub saved in case of need but Manolas injury f*cked him up as well. 3 matches at home left. We need to stomp Hungary at home to be above them in case of a tie due to the between-us results. The finns are the best team in this Group after us but I think they will play openly vs us seeing they re having momentum and that can cost us (as it should have cost vs the Hunns).

 

If this match ended up with a win you'd say a 9/10 performance. If it ended up with a draw you'd say a 7/10? Now that it's a loss you re bashing playhers whoactually played well. See the matches vs Estonia and Cyprus in the last qualifiers. Skibbe has put a lot of work to create link between the players offensively and try and play tiki taka. Give him some credit too. 

 

 

Edited by Rockafeller Skank
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Rocka, I feel like giving you my girlfriend when you use a word like 'mesoepithetiki'... I feel quite proud to be dumb after that. Bravo re!

How does Skibb-e turn Donis into Cavani and Pelkas into Suarez?

Mendel, you normally have these answers man.

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9 hours ago, ausgreek said:

Rocka, I feel like giving you my girlfriend when you use a word like 'mesoepithetiki'... I feel quite proud to be dumb after that. Bravo re!

How does Skibb-e turn Donis into Cavani and Pelkas into Suarez?

Mendel, you normally have these answers man. 

I really dont know how to answer. My sole answer is it is not possible. These are average players. Mantalos Bakasetas Koulouris Gianniotas. Pelkas is somewhat better than Donis. Either we sign a manager of the Rehhagel/Santos type or we will experience many embarrassments like yesterday. This Skibbe team wont lose to Estonia but will possibly lose against teams like Hungary, Serbia or Norway. To be fair, Skibbe should build a solid midfield out of crap players. The Tachtsidis/Kone/Samaris generation were not much use. They couldnt even squeeze out a 35-y-o Katsouranis. He was often bashed but he played because Santos had nobody better. (Other midfielders were Maniatis, a mediocre fullback turned DM who has had a great pace and work rate, an age old Karagounis, and a younger Tziolis. OMG.) I aint sure if Kourbelis Bouchalakis Galanopoulos will be any better. The talent pool is very limited. Even in 2014, our head coach had better midfielders at his disposition. Goalkeepers and defenders are OK but theyre nothing extraordinary. We have real depth only in the position of CBs. (And our idiotic coach doesnt call up Siovas who plays in LaLiga he prefers Kolovetsios Koutroubis Oikonomou.) As for our attackers, there is only Mitroglou and Fortounis. No one could replace Samaras since 2014. Nobody. I miss even Salpingidis and Gekas. A Valverde, Leonardo Jardim (both knew Greek football rather well) type coach would have been probably more successful than Skibbe. *incoherent ranting*

 

TL:DR: Skibbe is a fool even if I think even Santos would have his problems with this bunch of new players.

Edited by La Mendel
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2 hours ago, Ellada2004 said:

Skibbe did realize how putrid he was and subbed him at HT. Why did Skibbe not start Lykogiannis? Tzavellas did not have the pace to keep up with the Hungarian forwards and was at fault for the second goal. 

And for the first. He was undisciplined. Too often he couldnt get back (something for which Holebas had been bashed in the past, especially by me).

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We have to face it the reason we succeeded under Santos was our defence, we never were were able to score goals but we were rock solid defensively, The difference now is we still cant score goals but we concede goals way easier.. It's very obvious... We will never be a team to score at will and scoring more then one goal a game is next to impossible for us, so when we allow easy goals against the best we are looking to do is draw.. If we allow more then 1 goal against we are losing that game... Our FIFA rankings keep taking a hit losing to these s%$#! teams.. Maybe we need to face the fact that this is where we belong a group C middle of the pack team... 

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Guys Finland beat Hungary are saying greece is worse of a team? Again tactically we were passing the ball around half we had no strategy to our style of play looked like a free for all...that's where skibbe comes in...this is one of the most talented NT sides I've seen in long time so I'm not sure what is the problem....

Edited by jason
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All I know is that when we had the ball we didn't penetrate. We looked to play it safe and keep possession without playing a killer pass. Bouchalakis tried to play the 8 role but wasn't effective. 

I do think we have looked better with possession for quite a while. Playing Tzavellas had to do with corruption, no doubt about it. You can't drop Lykogiannis after he and the defence kept a clean sheet in the first match. 

We need actual wingers in my opinion. Lazaros doesn't cut it for the national team. I think he should be a back up striker for Mitroglou. We have plenty of other talented wingers such as Donis, Gianniotas, Fetfatzidis, Pelkas and Limnios (who should have been called up). 

I hear a lot of sites blaming Sokratis for being slow. I don't think so. Without him and Manolas we are doomed. Oikonomou is not good enough in my opinion. Mavropanos and Siovas are way better. Even Lampropoulos is better. 

We should play a 3-5-2. Mitroglou is too slow and needs that support of a faster striker to work with and that's Donis. Fortounis plays behind them. The wing backs should be Bakakis and Lykogiannis. Kourbelis and Zeca for the DM roles. Barkas in goals and Sokratis, Manolas and Papadopoulos in defence. 

With our team its like we don't want to score more than 1 goal. That's probably just luck because we had many opportunities in both games to score in big score lines. 

 

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I guess lets see what happens next month where we play Hungary for the final time in our next match, We lose or draw and we wont come out of our group, and if that happens there is no way we are coming out of th euro group which will be a much stronger group with actually 2 good teams that will be far superior to Finland and Hungary..

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2 hours ago, Dean97 said:

All I know is that when we had the ball we didn't penetrate. We looked to play it safe and keep possession without playing a killer pass. Bouchalakis tried to play the 8 role but wasn't effective. 

I do think we have looked better with possession for quite a while. Playing Tzavellas had to do with corruption, no doubt about it. You can't drop Lykogiannis after he and the defence kept a clean sheet in the first match. 

We need actual wingers in my opinion. Lazaros doesn't cut it for the national team. I think he should be a back up striker for Mitroglou. We have plenty of other talented wingers such as Donis, Gianniotas, Fetfatzidis, Pelkas and Limnios (who should have been called up). 

I hear a lot of sites blaming Sokratis for being slow. I don't think so. Without him and Manolas we are doomed. Oikonomou is not good enough in my opinion. Mavropanos and Siovas are way better. Even Lampropoulos is better. 

We should play a 3-5-2. Mitroglou is too slow and needs that support of a faster striker to work with and that's Donis. Fortounis plays behind them. The wing backs should be Bakakis and Lykogiannis. Kourbelis and Zeca for the DM roles. Barkas in goals and Sokratis, Manolas and Papadopoulos in defence. 

With our team its like we don't want to score more than 1 goal. That's probably just luck because we had many opportunities in both games to score in big score lines. 

 

Starting Tzavellas was the worst coaching decision by Skibbe they scored two goals when he was on the pitch, in the 2nd half with him subbed off they got nothing. Why doesn’t Skibbe call up a Siovas who plays in Spain? The coach keeps screwing us vs teams like Hungary who we should not be losing too and least off all allowing 2 goals too. As others here have said you would not see us leak goals especially the second one under Santos or Otto. Sound defensive football is suppose to be our identity!

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unlike many people wrongly think, as it always happens when we lose, we definitely didn't deserve to lose there and the game could have easily been a 0-2. but once again we couldn't capitalize our chances, hungary parked the bus the whole second half and as a result they got the win. i heard people saying hungarian players were better both tactically and individually and i really wonder if these guys suffer from astigmatism or something. 

yeah no doubt skibbe deserves much critisicm for his choices in both games, against estonia the line up with fortounis/pelkas/mantalos was awful and then he goes off with subbing in bakasetas, having 4 playmakers and no wingers or strikers is something you'd expect from a beginner coach in amauter level. as for the second game tzavellas starting had me vommiting, while donis is not a striker and he burnt him there. 

despite that i truly believe we are able to win all of our next games, or at least win 3 of them at home and take a draw against finland. we look better at the offensive part and create chances to score more than we often do. i just hope we'll have zeca for the next games next to kourmpelis, as well as mpakakis instead of torosidis. i would also like to have stafylidis and samaris but i think both of them have fallen out of favour in their clubs so unless something changes and they get playing time i doubt they will be around, which is awful. on the bright side we'll have karelis and retsos back for sure. 

galanopoulos, tsimikas and limnios could surely help us but will stick with the u21 for their most important game in their qualifcation against croatia. 

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Honestly the best thing that can happen to us is we don't come out of our group in the Nations League and Skibbe gets fired, That way we have a new coach for the Euro campaign,  Even if we do top this Group Skibbe is not the coach to be able to carry us to winning a spot via the nations league and we will lose to one of the other teams with Skibbe. Since Skibbe was with us we haven't been able to beat a good team, yes we have had a draw with Belgium but we also tied Bosnia twice... When is the last time we beat a good team with Skibbe as our coach? it has to go back to the Netherlands in a friendly and that's not saying much since the Netherlands were a disaster as well then.. His choices and tactics are costing us and hindering our potential. As hard as this is for me to say but not winning our group may be the best thing for the future and success of the team. I do truly believe with Skibbe as our coach we will not make another tournament..

Edited by J1078
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1 hour ago, J1078 said:

Honestly the best thing that can happen to us is we don't come out of our group in the Nations League and Skibbe gets fired, That way we have a new coach for the Euro campaign,  Even if we do top this Group Skibbe is not the coach to be able to carry us to winning a spot via the nations league and we will lose to one of the other teams with Skibbe. Since Skibbe was with us we haven't been able to beat a good team, yes we have had a draw with Belgium but we also tied Bosnia twice... When is the last time we beat a good team with Skibbe as our coach? it has to go back to the Netherlands in a friendly and that's not saying much since the Netherlands were a disaster as well then.. His choices and tactics are costing us and hindering our potential. As hard as this is for me to say but not winning our group may be the best thing for the future and success of the team. I do truly believe with Skibbe as our coach we will not make another tournament..

I have the same thoughts about Skibbe getting canned. The only thing is that we have to hope that Greece manage to top this group (which should have been a sure bet) and then  win Group C Nations league so we book a EURO spot or else we go into the traditional qualifiers with the threat of having a very tough pot 1 team ex. France, Spain or Belgium and a difficult pot 2 team thrown in. If that’s the case then we may have to wait until 2022 World Cup to see the Ethniki in tournament football.

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im confident we'll win our group there, in fact i think we 'll win all 4 games we have to play. this will lead us to play both the single leg semi final and the final game at home.

if we fail we'll be hoping to havea good draw for the qualification which start on march..

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If we do fail there is no way we will have an easier group in the euro qualifiers then we have now even with a favorable draw, So if we Don't win the nations League group it doesn't matter what draw we get in the euros as it will be a much harder group then this easy group c group we have now..

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7 hours ago, J1078 said:

My only worry with that is if we top the group in the nations league but loose in the playoffs of group C that might just be enough for Skibbe to keep his job heading into the Euros..

What plays off do you guys keep talking about? I’ve looked into this but can not see the play offs that keep getting mentioned, unless you are referring to Euro 2020 playoffs after the Euro Qualifying Group stage

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