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I'm sick of hearing negativity on this forum of our beloved national team. Seriously what is it that makes people bash our own team. Be positive. Even a Croatian journalist said that how is it that we do so well but not have one top star in the team. I want everyone to have a look at the video and specifically that question. Sokratis couldnt have said it any better. Have some belief for god's sake. I always hear we don't have depth, our players are not good enough, we have to play like this, we have to play like that. Enough! We are not a perfect team we will probably never will be. But as Greeks we have heart and the one thing we know is pulling through when our back is against the wall. Just be positive and if we don't succeed accept it and say something positive about it. This goes to everyone who is always whinging and complaining, im to blame as well but some people just don't stop. I believe we will win both matches. Be proud and look forward to the match!

it's alright. come back of the year baby. 3-0 hellas next game pame!

Go fook yourself, Come back when you actually have some silver wear, which will be never. Lets take a look at Croatias trophy cabinet!

defensive "boring" style of football........... its funny, in every other team sport - defense is prized and sought out..."defensive player of the year" awards are given out in acknowledgment of this difficult skill...... yet Greece ALWAYS gets knocked for it. Itlay played "catenachio" for decades and yet you never hear anything about Italy playing boring soccer. such a hypocritical, double standard.....

Vasilis Tsartas ;)

hahaha your dreaming. But I like that dream. But won't happen

We must face it: our Golden Generation was the 2004-2014 team. Especially our midfielders are far far worse than key players of our All Stars Team, Zagorakis, Basinas, Giannakopoulos, Karagounis, and Tsiartas. Katsouranis was the last one among them. Now we have glittering mediocrities (Samaris Tachtsidis Christodoulopoulos Mantalos + Ninis Kolovos) and hard-working nobodies (Maniatis Tziolis Bouchalakis + Petsos). We should reactivate Katsouranis and Karagounis (I know it isnt possible, but the team must have leaders who have authority because either of their achievements/experiences or their abilities). Among our players of today, only Sokratis Papastathopoulos has the qualities of a leader. Those F***heads who didnt give Santos in 2014 the greater salary he wanted are among the main culprits. With that great coach at the helm, we would have somehow continued to overachieve like before 2014. One cannot win games without winning the midfield (as perhaps tantra said before the game), and since 2010-11 we did this with basically crap players. How Santos was capable of such a feat like two second rounds with Katsouranis & Karagounis who were actually mummies in 2014 and with the likes of Maniatis, Ninis, Holebas, Kone, Samaris etc. etc. thats beyond me.

We defended like a team canada it was disgraceful. Every goal except one was a gift. It’s like we had a bunch of Lovrens on our side. We give up 1 goal in Belgium to a superior team down a man for 30 mins and today 3 goals in a half hour. Just unacceptable.

are you in pain that mighty dzeko couldn't score against a team who to faroes?

bosnia euros PARTICIPATIONS = ZERO Greece Euros' WINS = ONE

perhaps one of the worst displays ive seen from this team in a long time...disorganized, they look timid, clueless, not confident and ready to impose their will on the game. we cant play any worse......thats the bright side. again, our lack of creativity in midfield kills us..... their D is very vulnerable... regroup...hold them like we can, and grab another goal and we r in good shape..... karnezis sucks...alwau=ys has. NEVER liked him...can he stop just ONE penalty shot in his lifetime? just ONE. but the reason for ALL that was that we did exactly what i feared...we sat back and let crotia dictate the pace and rythym of the game. it is a recipe for disaster as u can see.... we r one step bhind croatia in reaction time.... manolas is missed....for sure as evidenced by what happened.

Greece definitely under performing. Croatia's playing its best match since the EURO. When one sees Kalinic's performance, Mandzukic absence came as a blessing. Greece scoring the 2nd goal and match ending 3:2 is the only way I see you guys qualifying.

Καρνέζης, Μανιάτης, Τζαβέλλας, Παπασταθόπουλος, Παπαδόπουλος, Τζιόλης, Σάμαρης, Ζέκα, Σταφυλίδης, Φορτούνης και Μήτρογλου η ενδεκάδα σε διάταξη 4-2-3-1. #Ethniki

Will be on Sportsnet. I like to watch it at home because I pace around like crazy during these matches :)

yeah thinking of ordering it and just watching with my dad and maybe inviting friends over. I actually want to watch the game though, it often ends up becoming social hour and hard to actually hear commentary and s%$#!. If anything might do frappes though as that's where I usually go.

I understand what you are saying but how about the fact they they let almost a month pass and only until Manolas was cleared to play and chosen on the squad was the suspension then brought down 6 days before? Also a suspension like this has never been given out before. Do you honestly think If Ronaldo did the same thing that Fifa would suspend him from a playoff game? Not a chance in hell does this happen to another top end player on a big team.. This is absolutely bullshit... The fact that Fifa didn't even reach out to the Epo to let them know they will review what happened within a few days after Monalos received the yellow stinks even more.

The future looks bright with Donis Stafylidis(if he decides to step up his career and go to a team that respects him and doesn't ditch him because he wanted a big club signing) Retsos Pelkas Fortounis Manolas and Sokratis and of course Mitroglou will all be here in the next Euro and World Cup maybe. Our lack of decent holding midfielders since the Karagounis and Katsouranis duo is ridiculously visible 3 years after their exit from the NT. And yet 2 years before that you were all crying for Santos to Start promising Tachtsidis, talented Fetfatzidis. Where are they now? This defeat is not because of the coach. Cry all u want about Skibbe but Mourinho comming wouldn't prevent these brutal mistakes. For this defeat only the players can be held accountable. Sure. We could have had someone else over Tziolis in the midfield and obviously Bakakis over Maniatis but how much different would the team look. I tell u not a bit. We went there having shat our pants. We treated this match as the "match of our life" and that's what you get a 50/50 , either kill or be killed. Croatia is not even close to as good as the score indicates. To be fair, and call me m@!@k@ I find it more possible for us to win them 3-0 in Athens than conceding 4 to them. I will be happy if we snap a win and then hope for a good group for the upcomming Euros, so that we can scrap some points and improve our ranking.

I asked my wife what would be score today. She said I see 5 ! I bet a 4-1 score and made $68! Thanks koukli mou!

We needed a flawless performances today and too many things went wrong. 1. Torosidis out (Having to play Maniatis) 2. Manolas out 3. Donis out 4. Zeca defanged with a yellow 5. Zeca with a clean tackle that could've led to a breakaway called foul. 6. Not starting Laz 7. Starting Tziolis. Should've been Laz on the wing, Zeca in Tziolis's place who was invisible.

We shut the Croats out in 2 games then we give away to stupid goals like a BOSNIA would concede. But we are Greece not failures like the Bosnians so it’s unacceptable.

They are a shi t show just like the Albanians and the Turkeys

Sokratis is better than any CB you ever produced.

Ηοw Low does my team have to fall in order to cheer for my hatred opponents loss? I mean your good generation is done Lulic , Ibi, Dzeko will be out in 1-2 years. Ready to go back to the bottom where ur football belongs?

Zeca, Sokratis, Papadopoulos, Retsos, Mitroglou were good. Fortounis, Stafylidis, Tzavellas, Maniatis, Tziolis, Samaris were atrocious.

Skibbe GTFO!!!!!!!!!!

skibbe is done for our health. today he commited some crimes so after sunday he's going back to germany. no problem in losing but losing respectively and not like that.

Painful to watch. Almost laughable at times.

if Mitroglou had pounced on that chance when papa crossed the ball across the face of goal after mitro's header, the game ends 4-2 and the Athens game is a little more meaningful But 4-1 is a mountain to climb and that is understatement of the year

Nothing worked tonight. You people wanna blame Skibbe ? Tzavellas ? Maniatis ? Im sorta with u. But nothing went our wa. Karnezis mistake and conceding 3 in one half is really something none of u expected and even Skibbe didn't think his team could concede almost as much as they did in 10 games total. The abscences also were a factor. If Toro was healthy we wouldn't see Maniatis there who was exposed totally by Perisic and we conceded 2 goals from his side. I'd like a win in the next match. This team has honestly not played that bad and made so many mistakes in one match since 2010 that I started following consistently (haven't missed a match since then to be honest). Big losses against Colombia and Germany we looked way better than this. Don't puss out. Greek at success Greek at failure too.

FT 4-1 Shouldn't be a problem to get a 3-0 result in Athens!

Yes. He is better than whoever u wanna put there. Even today he had 2 excellent corners 1 ended up in a goal the 2nd in Mitro heading slightly up.

everytime I watch a video of the ethniki training and even any videos leading up the matchday they all look like there on a holiday. birthdays dinners and stroll in the park

Imo, you can't blame individual players. The problem is that the team as a whole lacks cohesiveness, discipline, and consistency. All three can be cultivated by the team's coach. I wonder how much training, practice, and organization Skibbe has put in with this team? Based on their performance overall, I would guess very little. They need a better coach that can effectively organize and play up the strengths of the team. I hope they do not renew his contract after this fiasco.

See y’all in 2 years for Euro qualifying

Yes if they receive another yellow they miss Sunday's game..

maybe FIFA determined ZECA spells his name wrong given he is on a greek team so they banned for the next two games.....

always good to wheel the mounares on danforth though at half time lol

True, for me too I like to focus on match and listen to the commentary.

here is the best analysis for tonights game from my uncle who played for Olympiakos in the 50's. "diskolo paixnithi".... lol

Tzavellas plays Left Back in Turkey. THe fact that he can be a centerback as well due to his marking abilities and physical attributes tells me nothing. Tachtsidis had played Centerback for 10 minutes in Olympiakos- Sporting game. Maybe count him as a CB too? Retsos plays there because of his pace and because our only other decent RB (Bakakis not called) is injured. Also I agree with every1 saying it;s gonna be huge if we take a result without Manolas. It just sticks the team togther proving that our back up solutions are equally important. Besides Kyriakos played both vs Bosnia and vs Belgium and the team did not look any more flawed a single bit with missing a CB starter.

@dean97 Couldn' have said it any better. This was the reason I dropped the forums until yesterday because there were people crying and crying and crying. Even if we don't make it we re literally in the last 18 Uefa teams for the 13 Spots. Everyone had us written off finishing behind an , as it seems mediocre at best Bosnia. Croatia is full of excellent players who are nothing more than mere professionals. I do not believe they have the sacrifice and the team spirit we do. I know my argument sounds clownish but have u bothered checking our players' instagram photos? Even when the NT is not together (club duties) they re posting about it. Let's warm up a bit by remembering this. The Romanians, as well as the Croats, missjudged us and said they had a favoritable draw against us. The Romanians, probably as the Croats will do, also played all-out attack against us. We had not scored 3 goals in a match for over 5 years before that night. Survive today with conceding 1 goal maximum, and it's ours.

This team 18 months ago would not have been able to defeat Croatia, but through the hardships the players had faced, the lack of Euro's, has helped them all gel together. Gone are the uptight and c*cky players like Holebas, we have a strong outfit who can break down the weak croatian attack, but with the right movement forward, their defence will peel open. I have no doubt that we can pull of 1-2 goals tomorrow. ZHTO H ELLAS!

Thanks Tantra, very interesting. The geographical area of Greece produced some great civilization. Yes, the genetic code shows that there's a lineage from the ancients to the modern Greeks, but also a mixing of the populations of peoples who lived in the area. Does DNA carry qualities that make one people more special or even superior to others? Is there genetic memory that makes people predisposed to something? I think that people can make themselves what they want. It certainly feels good to have ancestors with a history of greatness, but it's up to you to learn from them and carry on the tradition. Also, should you be given privileges because your ..father won the Nobel Prize? You can certainly feel proud, but I'd ask you, have you done anything of importance? I see DNA lineage the same way. It's nice to have but show me something new, say your generation has done.... Also, nobody prevents anyone from adopting great ideas from the ancients, or from anywhere really, even if they don't have direct lineage, and I think this is beautiful.

I don't doubt that they had planned on making an example on this kind of fair play, but they definitely picked their shot with Manolas. Two birds with one stone. I wouldn't be surprised if it was payback for some behind the scenes stuff from the past. Bottom line, they knew what they were doing.

Let's not worry about Sunday as we have a a HUGE task at hand tomorrow..

What happens if KPap plays a monster game that he is clearly capable of doing? Is Manolas place locked for Sunday? Some serious thought would have to go into that one.

If Greece can go into Croatia and pull out a win without Manolas that would be huge and then have him come back on Sunday all fired up and shut down the Croats.

Sokratis should respond to this by saying...."he's absolutely right and we'll see him at game time" Make the guy think a bit.

losing out is never acceptable, but if u miss the tournament playing your best then, and your opponent beats you , so be it....u tip your hat to the opponent, and u move on to the next challenge....even with injuries they are part of the game so your call ups and talent evaluation is also part of being a good team....but at least the result was in your hands...u can live with that. but to have one leg tied behind your back, as an obvious flagrant attempt to tilt the odds, well that is unacceptable on every level.... these games are sssssssssssooooo close, and one mistake can be the difference....thats why this guy, manolas, in this playoff is very important and the decision by FIFA so clearly premeditated for reasons other than fair play, blah blah. blah....this example could have been made a million times prior to this incident....it was NEVER made before...to make it NOW, the way it was takes the game away from the players. i dont like 0-0 tomorrow. I dont like the idea of parking 10 guys back and absorbing pressure for 90 minutes b/c eventually one goes in....i would love to see the team set up an offensive formation and attack immediately. it will be unexpected and will keep their offense in their end of the pitch and prevent them from getting into any offensive rhythm....we need to test their defense early and often.... smurfs like stafylidis and tzavellas are very key in this game - active pests that keep things tight and give no room that can also chase the ball for 90 minutes......also fortounis needs to play his A game.

Listen to what Skibbe and Socratis says about the fifa suspension of Manolas..