La Mendel

This is another disaster. How many embarrassments do we need to suffer before EPO fires Skibbe?

Id see something like this: Barkas - Torosidis, Manolas, Papastathopoulos, Retsos - Kourbelis, Fortounis, Zeca - Mantalos, Mitroglou, Pelkas. Head coach: NOT Skibbe. Overall a good 11 Laz.

Sportdog.gr states Mitroglou will be available versus Hungry.

Guys it seems Santos was always right about Tachtsidis. He was never good enough between 2012 and 2014 to replace age old Katsouranis. He is about 27 and plays for a mediocre English Championship team. Same goes for Samaris who has obviously lost it... The consequence is that our midfield will necessarily consist of inexperienced players like Kourbelis Galanopoulos & Bouchalakis. Lets hope they can prove themselves superior to Ninis/Fetfatzidis/Tachtsidis/Samaris & Co. Wed need midfielders like Karagounis, Basinas, the young Katsouranis etc.

Vellios Returns to Top-Tier Football Great great international footballer Apostolos Vellios is now on loan from Nottingham Forest. In the current season he will play for Waashaal-Beveren, an unglamorous Belgian team that competes in the first league in Belgium. (In the end he will get a call-up sooner than wretched Tachtsidis!)

He should have been called up instead of Tziolis. If Skibbe wants experience... At least he plays in a competitive league.

This is a disaster. I guess we can forget him for a while (as for the Ethniki).

Is this happening in a parallel universe? Nottingham wont get promoted this year I bet. They have won only 1 game so far (out of six).

He will never score. And he will play another thirty games for the Ethniki under Skibbe. *evil laugh* He could but he plays always out of position.

I hope Mitroglou and Zeca will be healthy on Tuesday against Hungry.

This was a good display. Barkas and the four backs were okay, Fortounis scored a great goal, Kourbelis & Bouchalakis did their bit (was Zeca still injured?), Mitroglou gave a clever and great assist but where was Bakasetas while being on? Did he touch the ball? Now I remember, one time he tried to win a corner but a Finnish defender simply kicked the ball at him and they could come... This is Bakasetas with the NT all over.

Great result, now kill Vidi!

I hope youre right.

Another step in positive direction. He had a fairly good season with Olympia Prague (8 goals and 4 assists in 22 games) so I can see why a newly-promoted first tier team like Pribram wants to sign him. He has already played 33 minutes in two games for his new team.

I mean that it was he who thought them NT material.

Skibbe called them (or several of them) up in May and they made Saudi Arabia (one of the worst sides at this World Cup) look like Brasil. Risvanis was there, Im sure.

Actually, the georgelaz team looks fine. (Perhaps Samaris instead of Mantalos? But this is a trifle.)

The teams of several "promising" players are out of Europa League! Asteras: Kaltsas Manias Atromitos: Giannoulis Risvanis Koulouris We need these stars in the Ethniki, they should be called up again, theyre the hope of Greek football. ? ? ?

Thats great news.

I dont know how this will affect Mitroglous situation, but I can imagine he will be benched. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/6728859/mario-balotelli-marseille-nice/

Tsimikas scored in the last round in a 2-2 draw against Vitesse Arnhem. His team Willem II finished 13th, so they didnt get relegated. All in all he played 33 games, scored 3 goals and gave three assists. He had a good season, maybe he should have been called up last time instead of the likes of Nikolaou and Risvanis? Thanasis Karagounis played 2 games (52 minutes) for Zwolle. He gave even one assist in April against Roda but he will be released at the end of the season. Kostas Lamprou played 90 minutes for Ajax in a 2-1 away win against Excelsior Rotterdam. This was his sole game in the whole season (and he played 10 times for the U21 team but he is 28). His contract wont be renewed.

Belgian Playoff I results: Charleroi finished sixth (team of Marinos), Standard Liege was second (Koutroubis played 3 games in the playoff and 4 in the league, they won all of these games), Genk finished fifth (Karelis featured six times; 1 assist + zero goal which means his stats in the whole season are 20 games/4 goals/4 assists). Playoff 2: Kitsiou (36 games, 2 assists), Goutas (21 games, 1 goal) and Charisis (22 games, 1 goal, 2 assists) were in the starting XI in the last round. Kitsiou missed a penalty. Galitsios played 9 times in the last five months (one assist) as Excelsior Mouscron avoided relegation. Papazoglou played 14 games for Kortrijk and scored on one occasion.

So far Katidis has played 22 games for his Czech Second League team in the current season. He scored eight goals and gave four assists; on the last ten occasions he played he wore the captains armband. After a lot of mediocre seasons this is possibly the first step in the right direction. Czech Second league is arguably stronger than Ykkönen and Katidis was way better this year than in the autumn when he played for FF Jaro.

Gianniotas (Real Valladolid) season is nearly over. He played in 25 games (818 minutes - less than 10 full games), scored 2 times and gave 3 assists. Last week he gave an assist against Lorca in a 5-1 away win.

He was injured for a long time. After that, he has not been the same. This is clear. His fitness level was always low I guess. This backfires after a while, even if you are by nature as big and strong as a horse. Samaras has been like this. Kyrgiakos too. Many African players are the same (or are they age cheats? Ifeanyi Udeze who played for PAOK, for example. Retired at 28 lol. Odiah, Taiwo, Onazi, Lukman Haruna, Yussuf, Obasi, Kaita, Martins etc. etc.) Look at Ibrahimovic: he has always been as big as a mountain but he always worked on himself physically and he scored many times in EPL and Ligue 1 well over 30! Samaras couldnt score more than FOUR times in the last four years if we count league games only. With more than sixty games under his belt. In mediocre championships like LaLiga2, 1. Lig, US Second League (dont know its name), Saudi Professional League (a league where Tziolis is a regular starter). These guys usually go to the dogs when they are over 29. Even great stars like Shevchenko, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Owen, to a lesser extent Kaka and F Torres, then Podolski, Schweinsteiger, Adriano, Mendieta, Kily González, Guardiola etc. etc. can go that way. Its not enough that youre talented. You can be even a great genius like Ronaldinho, if your physical form is average, your health and form will rapidly deteriorate over the age of 30. Supporters and journalists wont understand what happened. Why did the form of Torres/Shevchenko drop in a spectacular way after they had signed for Chelsea? Surely because of the club. ROTFL. Not because they were about 29 AND their physical form was very average. Oh no. They couldnt live only on their outstanding talents. Cristiano Ronaldo, however, is in outstanding form (physically) thats why he is so prolific at the highest level at the age of 33. Same goes for players like Lampard, Scholes, Giggs, Drogba, Van der Sar (okay he was a keeper), to a lesser extent David Villa, many Brazil players like Ze Roberto who retired at 42 etc. etc. The Greek versions of these footballers: Karagounis and Vyntra (outstanding physical state well over the age of 30, they have been never seriously injured etc.) vs. Kyrgiakos and Samaras (they fell off the radar after the age of 29).