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That team that Rocha coached in the mid 90s had such stability and cohesiveness with mostly Greek players loaded with pride and passion and accompanied by only a few real quality game changing foreigners on it. The landscape of a Greek football has changed so much in The last 5 to 6 years that now every club including Olympiakos changes squads on the fly like a revolving door every Summer . Now we have foreign useless nobodies or ex has beens who join all the top teams that are out of contract and come to the SL already knowing that their tenure there will be short lived regardless of performances. No coach could do much under those type of circumstances. Anastasiou has lived a charmed life being kept as PAO coach for this long. That's unprecedented territory on Greece. OLY changed their coaches every six months it appears. Rocha with this same team right now ? Good question. I'd say yes just for the fact that these players now might need to hear a different voice and perspective on how to to do things in games. Sound fresh ideas are for sure necessary on this team today.

^Tell that to the boys in here who think "total Football" is the answer and praise anastasiou for it! Total Football was played by Ajax during Cruff's days back in the '70s! In case you haven't noticed...things have changed during the last 4 decades in the football world! If anastasiou is a product of total dutch footall, he can go back to holland and apply that as long as he wants it! HE HAS FAILED MISERABLY AT THE PANATHINAIKOS HELM! Asteras I am convinced that Rocha would have done much better that anastasiou! He would have never lost to Qabala! That's for sure!

You can't eiminate Qabala and you have aspirations of winning the title? Who are we kidding? This team has limited ability to accomplish such thing! We no longer have the stars of the past who won the last title! Gone are the likes of Cisse Katsouranis Leto Gilbero Silva Karagounis! Now you rely on some trianatafillopoulo,bourbo or marinaki to deliver you a title! Are you guys nuts? We are a decade away of winning a title! STOP DAYDREAMING AND COME DOWN TO EARTH!

This what I was saying before the game also. But It was still a big test because they have many quality players. Our first half was s%$#!!!! Thank god we have Spanoulis but if the other players step it up we can beat anyone! Important games ahead PAME ELLADARA!!!

I've made a promise to one of my cousins who in his younger days used to be a gate 4 psycho that if and when PAOK make it to he champions league group stages I will fly over for a fortnight and take in a home and an away game and take him with me.

I lived in Oreokastro for a year and some change when I was a teenager. I went to a couple friendly matched in Toumpa with my father, before I actually gave a s%$#!. That's about it. I tried to go for a couple big Euro and League matches the last few year, but my kids are 5, 3 and 2 so it tough right now...but I'll get there for a big match soon enough.

Cause for the majority of his career ( past it now ) he was an adaptable, give everything for the cause all purpose defender. Excelled at nothing in particular but when you need a defender to come in and do a decent job last minute they don't come much more reliable than him. Played across the back four. Very few defenders can do that.

**************** DELETED ... If someone from outside of this forum came across this thread, they'd be horrified at the things you write. Maybe you don't care, but you should. You should think a bit more before you post the things you do. This is a serious topic/issue. I don't claim to be an expert in any of this, but I try to keep the conversation moving, asking questions, stating opinions etc. You just post (what seems to me) hate filled cliches. Now I'm not advocating at all, that Greece should allow a massive influx of refugees. We don't really have the resources, and besides this isn't Greece's burden alone. Greece should merely try to do its fair share, to the best of its ability. The truth is, if Greece hadn't let the refugees cross the border to Skopje, the EU couldn't give two hoots about what is happening. Now that it is directly affecting multiple countries, maybe something could happen, but I don't remain optimistic. The ideal solution ? Peace in Syria, so they can return to their homes, but I don't see this happening. As for your claim of let them drown, let me pose a hypothetical. You are in a boat, and that little kid is drowning beside the boat. All you have to do is put your hand out and pluck him out of the water, or you can just watch him drown. They are the two choices. What do you do ? If you say, I let him drown, well, that is nothing more than pure evil. If you say, I'll stop him from drowning, well now you've just nullified and contradicted your earlier post. It's time to grow up and think before you post.

Still think he needs a "magoura" buddy??? DROGBA shows he still has it in his first game in the starting 11!!!

At least he should of tried to smuggle in steroids and other performance enhancing juices just to keep up with the baseball theme.

Well my aunt lives very close to Toumba about a 8 min walk. I dont go to Greece often so i only watched 3 games in Toumba, all exhibition games since i was going in August. The game i will never forget was a game against Leicester that my cousin took me to and well he decided to take me into Gate 4. The things that happened in that Gate during that game i will remember for the rest of my life. First a young teen started climbing the netting and shaking himself on the netting while he was up there. Well what goes up must come down and when he came down about 3-4 guys literally starting kicking the s%$#! out of this poor kid. I mean klotsies the works. I turn to my cousin and say 'why are they doing this'?? The answer he comes up with is ' They just put that netting in recently , its new ' LOL Later in the second half the game was pretty much secured by PAOK , everybody in our row was pretty quiet. Well all of a sudden this guy in the row in front of us with no shirt and tatoos turns around and screams to us 'SIKOTHITE RE GAMOTO , PROTO FILIKO ' you could see the vein popping from the side of his head. Next thing i know im jumping and clapping and yelling as loud as i can fearing i would end up like that kid in the first half. Anyway was a day i will never forget and it was just a friendly!!!

I've only been to Toumba once, and it was not for a game - it was late July in I think 2011. I was visiting my cousin who was attending school in Larissa, and we took the bus up to Thessaloniki before going to his horio. He more or less took me on a walking tour of the city (most of my family seems very unwilling to visit the city, so I take what I can get), which was great. We took the bus up to Toumba, wandered that road for a while (and visited what he insisted was a famous gyradiko, which I think is now out of business), and then made our way to the stadium itself. I remember thinking it looked like a war zone. We walked to the main entrance, which was locked up, but we then went to one of the smaller ones which had some hooligan-looking types (doubtlessly employees) kind of...lounging about? Anyway, they looked at us suspiciously, my cousin said he just wanted to show his paoktzi cousin from America the stadium for the first time in his LIFE, and they basically let us wander around for as long as we wanted. I remembered thinking how wildly different it was inside than out (in terms of cleanliness vs its exterior appearance) - this was before they really started posting those close-up videos on youtube, so almost all of the pictures I had seen of the empty stands were photo ops or from a distance. Anyway, after we got our fill of pictures, we went to the store, which I believe had just been renovated, and I bought some shorts or something similar. I've noticed that staff in clothing stores in Greece (at least when I go) seem to be way too interested in getting too-close and too-personal when you're trying stuff on in the dressing rooms. Or maybe it's just my taut, rippling muscles? Either way, I wish it wasn't dudes who did this. Long story short, I think I got molested.

my story is not a short one, but here goes anyway. in early 2010 my wife and I thought we'd take our 16 month old daughter to Greece to see my Yiayia. Thought, may as well get a holiday in and booked 4 weeks with some time on an island and in Athens as well as a stop in Paris to see my best friend who lives in London now. My folks said 'how about we come at the same time' while not ideal from a cramping our style point of view, there was a bit of on hand babysitting that could be done. Dad went over 3 months earlier being retired to see his mum, and my mum would fly over with us. A fortnight before we were supposed to fly out my Theia calls and says your dad has had a stroke and he's in the hospital in Drama. Mum and I fly out within 48 hours and spend the next week doing the nurses job for them in the hospital [never, ever get sick in Greece EVER the hospital in Drama looked like something out of an old school Eastern Bloc cold war era time]. Eventually we get Dad moved to the Diabalkaniko hospital in Thessaloniki and the place and doctors there are amazing. They put Dad in an induced coma and into the ICU for 2 weeks. During that time we can only see him for 30 minutes twice a day at very specific times. The hospital happens to be next to the Hotel Nikopolis so we stayed there so we could walk back and forth. I think I've mentioned this previously but this is where the players and coaches would spend the 24 hours previous to any home game or departure for any away game having meetings and other stuff. This was also during the playoffs at the end of the 2009/2010 season and there had been a Wednesday game at home to Olympiakos postponed for the general strike [the day some psychokhunt threw a molotov at a bank and killed people inside]. They rearranged it for a Sunday and so there were plenty of tickets available. I jump in the car and head to Toumba to buy a ticket. The guy asks me what kind of ticket I want. My answer a pair of the most expensive ones you've got as long as they guarantee me a seat. There was no way I was talking my wife to a game and going in Gate 4. So the day comes around and we jump in a cab to the ground and go in. The wall of sound is immense, we walk to our allocated seats and they're taken. Not being used to not being able to see anyone remotely looking like a steward/marshall/usher anywhere in site, I say to the guy, I think these are our seats. He laughs and says, listen mate I don't know what your ticket says but we always have these seats. Now I'm no hero especially with my wife there so I look further up the stand and there are plenty of free seats so we go a few rows further back and relax waiting for the teams to head out. My wife starts pissing herself laughing when the PAOK players come out to the strains of ACDC's Thunderstruck 'haven't they got any metal songs of their own?' The game starts and we are all over them like a rash, Lino was especially strong that day up and back like greyhound. Nikopolidis fluffed a clearance deflected by Filomeno that went to Muslimovic who slotted it. We dominated large swathes of the game but couldn't exactly relax on a one goal lead. However the scores remained unchanged and everyone left very happy [particularly as away supporters were banned during the playoffs] Below are some photos I took from the game and a youtube link to the highlights. I had been to see PAOK a number of times in Serres, but never at Toumba. https://youtu.be/8mpf_wUtJbI Meanwhile back at the hotel we were there for pretty much the entire playoff run so I saw the players around quite a bit. I even sat and had a coffee with Muslimovic [he really is one of the nicest people you could meet] in the bar. One of the girls that worked there gave my daughter a handful of karameles and told her to go and give them to Fernando Santos to see if she could get her to make him smile or laugh [she swore she had not seen him smile once in 2 years] and she got him to crack a smile, but no laugh, she even got a hug from Conceicao. Could you not laugh at this? It was the brightest part of a truly awful and horrific time.

1. I would say (as for the keepers and defenders, those who was called up now are OK): Midfielders: Maniatis, Tziolis, Kone, Fortounis, Petsos (?), K. Papadopoulos as a DM, Samaris & Tachtsidis (for the moment as a squad player). At a pinch even Makos, just not Klonaridis, Kolovos and the likes. Attackers: Mitroglou, Samaras (only if he has a club), Salpingidis (?, only if he has a club), Fetfatzidis (as a squad player). Christodoulopoulos? Perhaps Karelis? More question marks. 2. At the Euro none of them played as a centre back, Dellas and Kapsis were the centre backs.

Little Aylun Kurdi is going to be this in 15 years

:lol: :lol:

Does she have a manatee tattoo? That would be delicious (like her).