mangas21

typical over sensitivity...for a guy who isnt in the mood you sure wrote alot... look, i never meant to insult you personally, so if I did it was not my intention... this is a forum. if we are all gonna kiss each other asses, whats the point...disagreement is much more instructive as far as i am concerned. bottm line i thought the comments were silly. never said u were silly, or u dont know soccer or anything directed at you, nothing.. also i never said these guys were quality. but u said samaras has zero skills which is silly (look at just this game again and see how much he was involved in the goals) and mitroglou who did not impress u but scored his goals...make no sense to me. instead of focusing on the fact that we came out a bit aggressive for once and that tactic made a HUGE difference (regardless of the gerusia) who make the comments you did... sorry man, but they were silly.....if i say something you think is silly, tell me - straight up....i will defend my position, and u either dig in or u see my side as another perspective... thats what forums and lively discussion is all about... we all bleed blue and white....so please, dont be so sensitive....

js - we outclassed romania....i did not know they were so weak, especially in defense...we can exploit it very easily if we push up like we did today... guys like tsiolis for instance are so important but what they do is not obvious...kats is the same way...i assume maniatis is that way as well because he does not overtly impress me with anything i cant point to....but so much of soccer is subtle and not obvious... i wonder why fourtouni is not in.... i wrote prior to the game that i would be surprised if we did not go through...and, barring some disaster, we are going to brazil

" Not impressed by Mitroglou - even though he did seem to do what he was there for - score goals " ----------- huh? so i guess Liverpool, Chelsea and the other big German team that want him aren't that impressed either even though he sores goals.....dood what are you talking about? I don't understand why a player with zero (0) football skills - Samaras - is on the national team. Bad ball control, bad dribble, bad shot... In other words

WILL BE SURPRISED IF WE DONT ADVANCE...WE HAVE THE EXPERIENCE IN TIGHT, MEANINGFUL GAMES....AND IF WE PUT PRESSURE ON THEM EARLY EVEN BETTER..(UNLIKE GERMANY, SOUTH KOREA, SWEDEN, ETC ETC ETC ) WHERE SIT BACK AND ABSORB OFFENSIVE PRESSURE... CANT ALLOW THESE NEWBIES TO GET INTO A RHYTHM. THAT WOULD BE A BAD TACTICAL DECISION. NEED TO SHOW THEM WHO'S BOSS EARLY AND OFTEN....CAN NOT GIVE THEM TOO MUCH RESPECT....JUST ENOUGH TO GET THEM INTO BED, THEN TREAT THEM LIKE A RENTED MULE......

laz, very eloquently said....and u r on topic...(for the most part) but, in total disagreement..sorry....the point is to win. why bother playing? "peksame kala all xasame" werent you sick of hearing that? "no u didnt play well, you LOST"....... and, greece win 2004 was a stroke of tactical/coaching/execution genius..i though it was a beautiful display of teamwork, guts, opportunistic conversion AND DEFENSE - which by the way is much harder to play well consistently..there is beauty in a defensive style if u care to see it...of course we look like inept , weak and non creative on offense often. I'll grant you that, but its the way we play. (for now) if we need a goal we seem to be able to get it...the margin of error is small as we've said many times, but its just how they play, to the level of their competition. against romania we wont all of a sudden become brazil or argentina...we dont have the players to do that. can push the mids up to help the forwards. yes...will we? i doubt it...tactically they should put offesnsive pressure on romanina right away....but we won't...it always takes us 20 minutes to wake up...so we play to our strengths and if that means 1-0 in greece and 0-0 in romania then ill take it, no matter how much coffee i need to drink to stay awake as i book my ticket to brazil...

laz, 27 average is fine with me...what do expect? an average age of 21? you can forget that.....its NEVER been the MO of the national team....but even though the average is 27, thats not as relevant as the AGE of KEY players.....kats & kara, two guys who drive the team dont have the legs to play box to box....when they play deep in the oppostition zone, we get much better chances and we "look" more offensive.... and regarding your comment "no game was boring" I say ----how many tournaments did we qualify for playing "non boring:"? i'll tell you ---ZERO..........i prefer to WIN.........Italy has been playing catanachio for decades...i dont hear anyone belly aching about that.... the problem is strategy.....we play deep and look to counter...its the mentality that has shown success since early 2000, so they stay with it... regarding lithuania, the only reason we looked more offensive is because we wre not afraid of the other teams offenseive capability...so we pushed up further and, just form shear numbers, we had more plaayers in their offensive zone.... i dont think you can say replacing one or two aging players at midfield will result in a more offensive look....if we dont push up and play offensive minded, then it does not matter who is on the field.... kats is a scapegoat, but if you watch him onm a regular basis ihe is in the middle of alot of goals we score.....mind u, i am not a fan of him one way or the other, im just stating facts....i dont think he is the problem....its the strategy... js, i agree on fet....also santos does do some bizzare things...agreed...

laz i kinda disagree....the only older guys are kats and karagouni.... mitro/samaras/siovas/toro/holebas/fourtounis/ papa/ etc they arent old.... the PROBLEM is that midfiled is the most critical position - especially when transitioning the game form off to def and vice versa - if the mids cant go box to box to support the forwards then you have the makings of a team that appears slow.... kats/kara are positional players at this pint BUT in tight games - which these two are - one mistake out of position etc, could be deadly... We have never played with flair or gusto / we have always been defensive and counter....as far as i can remember thats the soccer mentality....so expecting anything different is really misguided.... for these games with the way the goals totls work, etc etc i think kats is needed in there....if u go back and look at alot of the reent goas we scored Kats was in the midddle either with a crafty pass or build up of sorts...... i think relying on samaras by himself o make things happen is a mistake....i would put fourtounis/samars and then tsiolis/kats slightly behind them with papa/pap/toros/siovas wit mitroglou and salpi up front ....at least then you have the ability to lend support to the strikers.....or say mitro samaras behind him fourtoui/tsiolis with kats behind them and the four defenders..... u need to support the Offense with some mids pushing up....we have been saying this same thing for 10 years.....they just dont play like that.....but i know they can.. isaw the friendly against ecuador in nj and they played very offensive, but kara and kats sat down for the entire foist half and much of the second......

is papadopoulos hurt? i really hope we dont go in there respecting this team too much...we REALLY need to go in there and immediately let them know who's boss.....but, we won't...we will sit back, sit back, play tight, defend as if we were playing argentina or germany.... very important not to allow away goals....i think that's the plan...they will be happy not to allow Romania to score, even if it mean a draw...at least then every goal scored in romania by us counts as two... very interesting

switch sweden and ukraine.... :D draw on Oct 21

denmark (16), iceland (17), croatia (17), sweden (20), romania (19), portugal (21), ukraine(21), france (17) , greece (25) i think these are the final point totals......throw out Denmark, and you have iceland /croatia/france as possibilities if it goes by point totals, --- highest paired with lowest. not sure how that works. doesn't matter - we are gonna go through.....

we can slice and dice the details until we are blue in the face........bottom line is u never know what team will show up...thats partly due to call ups, partly due to tactics and largely due to "do just enough to get by".....this is how we play....sit back, get pounded, absorb pressure and find an opening to counter. this is what we do as far back as I can remember.....this style works if you have rock solid D (which we dont anymore, especially when avraaam and that other guy who caused the penalty in Bosnia) and mids that can TRANSITION the paly well - not even play box to box - just transition the play quickly....this requires some type of offensive urgnecy, forwards that attack open space off the ball....all of which we dont have... santos has a bad sense of chemistry - he puts guys in that dont compliment each other....greece now looks more like a bunch of parts not in sync, rather than a cohesive unit.....

9-1 thats some funny shi t.....thought it was 10-0

clove, so u either a defensive mid or an attacking mid? pushing to the top of the box is irrelvant? just asking, not being a wiseass, cuase i dont the answer....if santos said, ok guys push deeper into the zone, would they be i a more attacking posture? s04 set the bar waaay to high and everyone expected us to be like that from that point forward. Obviously that dreaming....but yes a few games we played like s hit, i agree...but a few games we didnt...litchemstein playes like s hit, moldova palyes like s hit...just because we lost to argentina 2-0 means we [played like s hit? if u say, its disappointing that we could not advance further , yes, i agrree , but to say we play like s%$#!, well then how did we qualify? if u read my previous posts, i am very tough on this team - i am NOT a rost colored glasses fan...does the team pi sss me off? yes...of course...do i think we could play more consistently? dont know the answer...i know we play one way...sit back, sit back, dig a hole and sometimes dig ourselves out and sometimes we dont...unless we come out with urgency and will LIKE WE ARE ALREADY down, i see more of the same

Mangas, -------------Clove.... an example of their "leadership" is what you just saw against a lousy Bosnian team. An example of their "leadership" is what you saw at Euro 2012 (so what if we advanced to the next round we played like s hit). ---------- dont confuse intangibles with skill level.....thats number 1, number 2 kara scored the goal that got us past russia......kats gave the clever pass to salpi gainst slovakia.....so give credit where its due.....BUT BUT i am NOT advocating that they have a prominent role anymore...their best ball is behind them.....we actually agree on most points....i think they should ride the bench and if we need to stall the game to protect a lead, then they are not bad options for that, especially if they come in fresh for the last ten minutes or whatever.......but their experience is valuable, and in a perfect world they should accpet a reduced role and give the younger guys the benefit of their experience... now to say "so what" i think is misguided....when did we EVER advance beofre? I mean we were not even making into tournaments until now. Its unfair to say "if we dont go to the finals of every tournament its not a sucess" I disagree. Germany does that, Spain does that...heck even England gets bounced before the final eight sometimes....so to say "so what" and dismiss that accomplishment i disagree with..... The reason for the "sit back" mentality is because defense midfielders do just that; they won't open up and attack. If he continues to play defensive mids then you won't see anything different! Kats? Tziolis? Maniatis? Kara? Play Fetfa and Ninis and you won't see them sitting back, that is not their instinct or style, plain and simple. --------------------I have a question about this....Does Santos tell them stay back, or do they not know how to play attacking ball? which is it? IS it santos fault they cant put two passes together? I am curious to hear your answer on this, because frankly Tsilis for example was an attacking mid early on in his career. Gianakopulos who was an attacking mid always came back on defense...so isn't it the system of play that forces the mids to stay back? What do you mean its remarkable we've been successful with this style of play? We haven't been successful since 2004! Every appearance we've had in a Euro or WC since then has been trash! ---------------------success does not mean winning tournaments all the time, it means qualifying every time, and moving into the final 8 consistently and an occasional final 4 ......rememebr before 2004 we did nothing.......I was there in foxborough when we played argentina, nigeria and bulgaria......I can tell you greeck soccer has advanced big time since then....but, unless we keep a system that pushes and develops young talent, and we change the mentality of the way we play, you will continue to see these type of results.......

js i think we both on he same page....

clove, i hear you. But don;t downplay leadership...Keeping them on the bench, they can come in and diffuse/slowdown the game to protect a lead..........besides most of the guys on the bench never play anyway...... but until the "sit back sit bak sit back" mentality changes we will never move into the elite team group.....the only way you can impose your will on a game is by creating offensive pressure or at least instilling some fear in the other team that they should not send their whole team into our box....we dont do that...we sit back like sitting ducks and let the other team create the flow and rythym.......we eat a goal and THEN turn up the volume, and sometimes we pull it out.....its remarkable that we have been successful with this style of play....... i think this more than anything is the biggest contributor to greece's difficulty in cracking the elite team level......

avraaaammm (who i never liked) and tsiolis (who i do) both victimzed on the headers that went in....papastathopulos gets beat in the air alot as well.....papdopoulos was missed in that regard....and siovas or malezas could be used as well given their height.... isay it again fetfa mitro samaras (floating attak mid / right wing) fourtounis ninis taxidis tsilios toro pap papa malezas benck kara kats siovas spyropouos avraam christo do it....

jarv, dont know if they would go for it, but in a perfect idealistic world without egos & that "greek thing", you would think they would....an aging star is the hardest thing coaches have to deal with, in any sport. Ive seen greek players get ticked for the slightest reason and bail on the team... but the bigger issue as i see it - from my very limited vantage point - is no identity with this team. who are they? the 04 team did one thing great and played it to perfection...this team does nothing great...the defense is above aveage to good, at best...the midfield collectively stinks, and their forward game is really non existent....so what do you get? 1-0 barely beating slovakia and undressed 3-1 in bosnia with squeakers against the rest...they get by on soccer savvy and an occasional quality play....but no conviction, no sense of "we are on the field to accomplish x,y,z,...." no plan, no nothing....its the mentality of the strategy...sit back, sit back, sit back...they NEVER initiate the game, always counter....problem is now their D is not as good any more and their transition game (mid) sucks...... but again, im not in the locker, i dont know who says what, who tells santos what, etc.etc....i only know 3-1 bosnia, 1-0 slovakia etc....ultimately the team is judged by results...right 12 FIFA rank is an absolute joke. yes - bonsia deserved the game, not because they played great..i agree, but because e absolutely sucked. like other have said, "you think you can string two passes together"? geeeez.....i dont get it...

clove, look i dont know if the lineup i proposed would have won - experience (age) and soccer savy counts for alot.......but but but.........u MUsT commit to the future, right? and more importantly you MUST assemble a lineup that can figure out how to work together...good teams have an unspoken understanding of what everyone likes to do, where everybody likes to be, where they want the ball, etc.....throw in offensive minded guys with defensive minded guys and you stall - no rythym, no unity, no nothing..... this game WE DID NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN OTHING on offense....nothing......when was the last time we scored first ? (no including 0-0 games where we are the last team to score....) we play tight, relying on defense and perhaps catch a counter.....in the mean time we have no offesnsive plan, no way to put pressure on the other team, so the opposition sends everyone deep into our zone.....same old story......sweden, south korea, germany , etc etc etc.....until this changes, we can expect more of the same....... until we get consistency in the lineup so everyone knows each others game, good call ups, commitment to the young players its gonna be the same thing...... holevas should not play so much...torosidis disappears.....kara should come on late...katourani also.....their roles should be reduced. tsavella sucks, he got undressed on the high balls....avraam i never liked.....salpi needs help cant do anything alone.... mitro fetfa samaras (roaming) nin fourtouni taxidi tsioli pap papa siova toro off the bench: kats, kara,(stall the game and protect a lead) maniati, avraam, chrisoto, kone (fresh legs) comimit to that and see what happens....

yes.... alot on the bench or not playing....no reason why mitroglou should not be starting.....and if any of u guys read my previous posts, u will see that i am always questioning why fetfa is not playing...don't wanna hear this nonsesne of not in form blah blah blah....... your mid should be ninis (he needs tough guys to support him) fourtounis taxidis put tsilis behind him toro papa pap siovas and samara mitro fetfa up front...that is the lineup....(mabe a few are injured now but that the future) mitro fetfa samaras nin fourouni taxidis (or kone or whoever) tsiolis toro papa pap -------------------- forget holevas, bench christo, salpi, maniatis, avraam, etc etc etc this lineup can put some pressure on the opposition, keep them back, etc...............

goalie is good......everyone else (with the exception of samaras) sucked.... samaras cant do it alone....if he gets no support, u cant expect anything dangerous... typical Greece - you never know who will show up AND they N E V E R come out aggressive or try to impose their will on the game...why? because their "will" or their "stamp" or "their style of play" is to sit back, sit back, absorb and counter. Until that changes, they will NEVER be an elite team. It's not talent; we have talent, its changing the mentality of how they play.....its attacking open spaces, off the ball movement and team cohesiveness......that's always been the problem, and it continues to be the problem.........

this is without a doubt the most ridiculous over reaction of all time.....banned for life? are f__cking kidding me?

there so many things that go on behind the scenes that we dont know about, including within the team itself and pressure from club owners and governing bodies.... but unfortunately if we dont go through their will be nothing but criticsm, finger pointing, calls for new coaches, new players, new team uniforms and anythng else that can be complianed about..... what should happen is the team should be met at the airport with supportive and appreciative fans for the effort.....(unless they clearly show no effort) that the problem and its why a lot of players think twice about even playing..... imagine yourself a guy on the team that really busted his ass 100% and it wasnt enough...you get back "home" any there is nothing but knifes, daggers, and poison coming your way....think about it... i dont suggest complacency if the team struggle since you need to improve the team at teh expense of players egos, but if the team knows it has the suport of the fans and the media etc regardless of outcome, it creates a much more positive atmosphere....

jajajajajaajajajjaa......avraaaaaaaaaaaaaaam hits the big time he has his own thread !!!!!!! at least three that i can remember........but the guy can finish....idi u c how neatly he pushed the ball past sfifakis? avraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

now.................................T H A T S.................................entertainment !!!!!!!!