Rockafeller Skank

One year of maturity for some players and this is a strong line up: - - - - - - - - - - Karnezis - - - - - - - - - - - -Retsos-Sokratis-Manolas - - - Torosidis-Samaris-Zeca-Stafylidis - - - - - - - - - - -Fortounis - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Donis - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mitroglou - - - - - - - - - - I know noone likes 3-5-2 but maybe it is because of the players we have? Everyone sais it doesnt work but Dortmund used 3-5-2 this season quite a lot, so sokratis is familiar. Roma used 3-5-2 as well quite a few times this season, so I cant think Manolas being a stranger with it. Tzavellas knows it too and Im pretty sure Retsos who is good with the ball on his feet and quite versatile can't adapt to it. As for Skibbe 4-4-1-1 against Belgium. We didnt allow space to any of their good wingers. It will be a shame if we dont reach the WC and Torosidis - Sokratis - Karnezis - Samaris - Zeca - Mitroglou come of age.

You re calculating the goals based on today. If Bosnia win Belgium they ll get extra goal difference which u re not taking account of. I am sorta confident that this team will win both matches left. Cyprus is as uninterested as Belgium, because they need all the other results, apart from winning us and Belgium and scraping 4 goals to each of us, to go their way. This group proves to be hard in the end. Last WC we gathered 25 points and we were a pot 1 team. We ll win both and end up in 19. Lithuania is much worse than Cyprus. Bosnia is the same pot 2 team like the 2014 qualification and instead of Latvia we got a Belgium. Stats clearly don't lie. We ve even scored more goals and the fact that we manage to score on the counter against better teams , 3 goals vs Bosnia and Belgium, while we struggled vs park the bus teams proves that we re on track with the Santos era. I am really hoping that Skibbe stays with the NT for another campaign. Also, I had a friend here yesterday who quit following football when he started studying abroad. He hadnt seen the NT since wc 2014 and he told me that we have some players that we never really had. Modern football players Stafylidis Donis Fortounis Zeca who are very active on the field and very mobile players. I can't disagree with him that our NT is currently a lot better looking than when this campaign started. Not many static players. Even Samaris bursts his asss off and against Gibraltar he was looking lost and not in par with the opponent. Even against Estonia we didnt struggle, it was just the goal that was missing to prove who was the best team on the field. Karma owes us the second spot.

Exactly this. This defeat was totally unrelated to the result since we know from the beginning hte goal scoring is against us. Bosnia, either we drew yesterday or lost, MUST win Belgium. Considering Bosnia is playing in an away small ground with 0 attendance really does not exactly build the atmosphere they want in their home matches.

win or draw works since beating cyprus means we go through with any result bosnians bring. And then we let them fight with Estonians and Cypriots for 3rd-4th.

clueless poster.

Last 5 matches of Estonia: Friendly win over Croatia (b team obviously) 3-0 draw with Cyprus away defeat to this 33 goals Belgium by only 0-2 home draw against Greece away Win over Cyprus The team changed from 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-1-1 and they have had results. Im not saying this on our favor but they have obviously improved and changed mentality.

As I said in my previous post. Skibbe's only mistake is not tiring a few key players like Samaris Stafylidis , even Maniatis against Estonia. Can' blame nothing on Skibbe today. He made Belgium look like a mediocre team. Everyone was so easy to blame Retsos Tzavellas Zeca Mantalos so far in the campaign but noone has thrown the blame on Sokratis who not once but twice has cost us a total ofl 4 points vs Belgium. Sokratis is one of the best in the world dont get me wrong, but it took literally two bad moments of him to cost us 3 points vs Belgium away and 1 point today. But noone likes to point it out because he is really our best and beyond critiscism, right ? Wrong. He is the pillar of the NT and he should perform a bit better, at least today. After the goal we scored he slept. Zeca literally everywhere. Left midfielder , Left winger, second forward out of nowhere, and a goal. Tzavellas with the assist. Donis will be big one day if he works and doesnt get lost like Fetfatzidis or Ninis. To be fair having met his dad in real life when he coached Atromitos, I believe he will do everything he can to not let that happen. a 4-4-2 with Fortounis behind to create and Donis as a striker behind Mitroglou can actually be a good combination next year, if we qualify. It will be a shame if we don't. I believe Belgiums B side will again stomp Bosnia, because they re thirsty to prove themselves that they deserve a starting spot. Maybe, maybe maybe, so many maybes. Not to mention that Belgium is currently 9th in the rankings and will definatly need a sweet top 7 before the World Cup draws are made. I mean if you have a strong side aiming to win the thing, Im sure its not the first thing that matters after you qualify, but maybe in a month from now it does? This match wasnt bad. Even the score 1-2 isnt bad. Friendly reminder that in 180 minutes against Belgium , not 90, one game is lucky , two games cant talk about luck , we conceded 3 and scored 2. After this match its proven that Greece can actually stand in big tournaments against some better opponents, and will not ridicule itself if the team qualifies. Bosnia - Belgium with current standings and hte fact that Bosnians play their matchday before us means they have to push for the win to make sure they re above us. I cant think of Belgium, who scored two goals in one of the best defences in this campaign 5 goals in 8 matches, 3 of which from the best offence in the campaign, I doubt their literally MEME TIER defence of benchwarmers can stop the likes of even B Belgium team: Benteke , Carrasco , Chadli , Nainngolan, Tielemans. Even if Belgium somehow does make it, Estonia is really on fire lately. Bosnia loses to Belgium - Greece draws to Cyprus -> we still have a chance based on goalscoring/goals Bosnia concedes from Belgium Bosnia loses to Belgium/draws Belgium - Greece wins Cyprus -> we re secured second spot and contender for a play off spot based on the other second teams. Bosnia wins Belgium - we re by 90% out.

I expect Estonia to play the same football they did against us just to scrap a point. Cyprus has the hardest programme remaining in their last two games after today. Cyprus has Estonia away - Belgium away - Greece home. Hardest programme of the 3 contenders for 2nd spot. Cyprus wins 3 games -> 19 points (impossible scenario) Cyprus wins 2 games -> 17 points(impossible scenario) Cyprus wins 1 game, draws one or two -> 14/15 points (very likely) Cyprus draws Estonia and Greece -> 12 points At best I can see Cyprus finish with 14 points with a win over Estonia and a draw against us. Greece has Gibraltar home , Cyprus away , Belgium home Best case scenario we would all love is 9 points. Most possible scenarios Draws/Loses to Belgium , wins Gibraltar , draws Cyprus -> 17/18 points Draws/Loses to Belgium , wins Gibraltar , wins Cyprus -> 19/20 points only case Cyprus surpasses us is if they win all 3 of their games. Today if Cyprus dont get a 3 pointer they areoficially outside the 2nd spot. The only problem I am afraid is that while we are killing each other (funny how everyone was talking about Cypriots giving us help in the points while in the meantime when they have the option to fight for themselves everyone talking about how they re gonna leave us behind- It was abd to start saying such things abou help in the first place is my point) Bosnia takes advantage of an uninterested Belgium and go to 20 points.

Bakasetas - Stafylidis - Mantalos - Holebas from all these players used on the Left Wing, the only one who actually made some sense and has some man-to-man skills is Donis. I believe we ll just miss another flank from thousands of mistakes of anyone who we put there if we remove him. He is an atomist when it comes to shots etc, but he barely loses the ball. Donis is gonna be on the wings. As for Bakasetas, how better is he from Diamantakos and Vellios mate.

What else would you do in his position? Vellios failed miserably. Diamantakos played 15 minutes. It's not like we have options mate.

As I see it the play off spots will be Sweden Switzerland N.I. Italy Wales/Serbia/Ireland Montenegro Slovakia Greece Iceland/Ukraine/Croatia/Ukraine apart from Switzerland and Italy everything else is quite managable. Croatia has low chances of finishing second imo and so has Serbia , who are the best teams in Groups taht still are too close to decide.

you mean 500%. They are two points behind, which means that we lose tomorrow to Belgium - they win Gibraltar , they go up by 1 point we win Cyprus - They draw Belgium , we go up by 2 points last matchday we win Gibraltar - Bosnia wins Estonia , we remain 2nd by 2 points. , so honestly the match with cyprus seems more crucial than the Belgium one, since even if they win Belgium, as long as we win Cyprus we are mathematically even and that's when the goal factors kicks in. Problem is that, if they win Belgium and we lose to it, it means they wont have many goals conceded to Belgium, while in the meanwhile we ll have conceded a few, so it''s a done deal. I would be happy with this NT after so many of its failures to finish 2nd , no matter if we qualify via play-offs or not, considering the possible opponents, but finishing 3rd equal points with the second is not a bad result either, considering how hard this group was (best Pot 5 team by far in Cyprus, One of the best Pot 1 teams and we still managed a draw with them , undefeated by 2nd pot good attacking team Bosnia. Sadly, if we won on Thursday we would be talking about success only, with a locked play off spot. Right now, we have to consider the possibility of failure. As for Skibbe. In my opinion he is doing a good work. The fact that one bad match (which we didnt even lose)might cost us a top 2 finishing shows the difficulty level of the Group.Tziolis needs to be called up. Our only experiecned player 10+ years with NT. Doesnt have to be fielded though. In my opinion to the strikers, as people ask why he is calling Diamantakos and Vellios. Vellios is a good striker. Just off form not played for a month and didnt play for over 4 months a competitive match, just friendlies. He wasnt in sync with the AMFs on thursday. He doesnt know how to play with them, which begs the qustion what the hell is happening during training? He is always putting his first line up against the back ups? They couldnt find Vellios anywhere with their crosses. Diamantakos. I am pretty sure once a familiar yet forgotten face comes back will become a nobody, until he decides to step up his career and try harder. Everyone has forgotten that our second striker in the que is injued for almost a year, Karelis. I am pretty sure that when we were counting the losses for last match we forgot to count him in. It's another thing to miss your first striker, but having a decent enough striker (not as good yet but still - decent for a decent Europa League team) to replace him, and another thing to miss both of them. And As I posted earlier a couple of days. Most of the matches in early september this team can't play. Draws with Georgia, barely winning liechtenstein at 80 and such. They didnt happen under Skibbe, but Rehaggel and Santos. A re we gonna call these coaches flops as well? I honestly dare you. The only mistake that in my opinion did in Thursday was taking the match lightly. In every interview he said that he is not even thinking about Belgium yet. First we gota do what we gotta do against Estonia. Yet it seemed to me, apart from our injured players Mitroglou, Karelis , Torosidis and suspended Sokratis, he rested Samaris, Tachtsidis, Stafylidis for Belgium match. Excluding (the striker of aek who i forgot his name and he plays as a LW for the ethniki-insert name here- lol i literally forgot i swear and not bothered to look it up, thats how bad he is) from the Belgium line up we were missing a total of 6 key players. I believe he rested them for Belgium because they re not in form and 2 matches in 4 days would probably tire them too much to product against Belgium.I kinda understood it when he brought Stafylidis in after 60. One of our key players in the campaign was benched. We ve seen him in 3 positions so far in this campaign, but not a starter only when Holebas was here. On the one hand, this was unacceptable. Because as he was saying in his interviews he should only focus on THAT match. But who tells us that in such a high pressure defense we would score with them as well? Most possibly yes, but Im not sure anyone could deliver in this period. On the other hand. consider the fact that we fielded an all attack scheme, with our best players and still didnt take the 3point. Skibbe relieves the pressure from him since he did nothing wrong, then Belgium match comes. Key players already tired since they had a 90' match a few days ago, and the previous full match they had was 81 days ago. We d literally go against Belgium with our hands down. Is this possibility possible?(pun intended) I cant be sure. I am not a coach, I am not a physio, I have never attended professional trainings after summer breaks. But, how the f*ck can you be so sure it is not? According to this theory however, a Gianniotas would be more useful than Mantalos on the wing vs Estonia, since he is a bench player either way, but again Skibbe preffered a player with matches before, and crucial ones for CL/EL. My last words for Skibbe, so far in this campaign are: Undefeated and 2 points safe for 2nd place, first bad result the team takes, how fast are we to judge him, when he was praised after Belgium, only a few months ago. The only match the team seemed lost was vs Bosnia at home.

I dont think so. Havent read anything but I dont know either. It seemed to me like Kyriakos was taken out so that Tzavellas-Retsos go CB and the team plays 3-6-1

a draw is an excellent result, as it means that for Bosnia to go through us in points, have to play for the win against Belgium. Bosnia not parking the bus with this defence is a 90% defeat secured.

with Naingollan - Witsel and Hazard out 4-5 goals might seem too many against a solid defence. Even losing with a small difference might make the difference. Bosnians dont score much in this campaign either, so making sure the difference is forced through goals against could help us fight for the 2nd spot in tie.

You re all just very pessimisting over the first bad result this team gets. We played well, but the scheme was very defensively orientated. Schibbe, as much as I like to defend him, failed in this match. Too much defense against how many players of Estonia crossing the midfield? One? Two?. His subs also made no sense. could have easily made this a 3-5-2 when he subbed Kyriakos off for Stafylidis. or a 3-4-3. But im not gonna take the head of a coach that's using a successfull formula of the previous ocaches rehaggel and Santos. And that is first making sure we don't concede, then we see offense. This was what ranieri tried to change, and this was why our NT from almost in the top 8 of 2014, didnt qualify for the Euros. Skibbe knows what he is doing. I totally agree with Tziolis call up. He is the most experienced player in the squad who has been with the NT for 10 years , but i totally disagree with him being a starter against any opposition other than Gibraltar. To be fair Zeca and Tziolis are different styles of players in the same position. midfielder who focuses on defending and winning balls in he midfield. Them being in the same line up against a 11-0-0 (yeah i never thought Id actually say that for football ant not for girl issues) lower quality team didn't make any sense. But Im not gonna take his head after one match. Ethniki has taken results against many opponents who are on par or better with us under Skibbe. Australia, Netherlands, Belgium , Bosnia twice. The first time a team tried to play defence against us by giving us the ball and defending against us we struggled. Whenever we had an opponent who was playing with a possibility of winning (Cyprus,Estonia away,Bosnia,Belgium) we had some crucial chances that ended up in results. Im pretty sure that if this forum existed before 2014 this was a problem then as well. NT struggling against smaller opponents who give our team the ball and defend. We re simply a defend till I die team and hit on the counter. Last night I couldn't count more than one, maybe two counterattacks for us. It was the exactly same NT as the one who was scrapping 1-0 wins, only this time, with absences and bad luck, the goal didn't happen. Im not gonna start the typical couch coaching from the first game. Should the belgians do what you are asking after their draw with us in Belgium? Scrap all their players and start over because "the players we had couldnt deliver" after just one bad match?

LoL. If Cyprus wins Estonia on Sunday, no matter what happens to our match against Belgium , we will be 0-3 points in front of them. In the meantime Bosnia will be playing with unirrelevant yet strong Belgium, meaning that if Belgium wins again and we re playing Cyprus, Cyprus might end up second. Cyprus will give a fight even if it is for 3rd spot i believe. Why should they gift themselves on us anyways? If we can't beat Cyprus away what will we do in the play offs? Our only savior is that Cyprus has yet to play Belgium away and they have already played Gibraltar twice, which we haven't.

Πάντως πρέπει να πούμε ότι αυτό το πρώτο ματς τέλος Αυγούστου-αρχές Σεπτέμβρη διαχρονικά είναι μεγάλο ζόριΜε Ρεχάγκελ χάσαμε 2-1 από Αλβανία αμέσως μετά το γιούρο και κερδίσαμε με τα χίλια ζόρια 1-2 στο 95 στο Καζακστάν. Επίσης φέραμε χ 1-1 με Μολδαβία.Με Σάντος φέραμε 1-1 με Γεωργία και 1-1 με Λετονία και κερδίσαμε με τα χίλια ζόρια 0-1 στο 80 στο Λιχτενστάιν. Είναι εντελώς ανέτοιμοι οι Έλληνες παίκτες τέτοια εποχή just a random post I found in a sports site about today's result. Im sure Santos and Rehaggel were terrible coaches as well right? Let's kick Skibbe, Im already tired of him.

Mitroglou and Papastathopoulos are considered 100% sure (for now) for the match vs Belgium. Torosidis is a 50-50, probably will miss next match too though.

Why though is your mentality so bad? Why are you forcing the opinion that this team, with or without luck will f*ck up. Today luck was with us since Cyprus won. Today luck wasn't with us though since no matter what we did Estonian wall wouldn't move. Estonians played an A M A Z I N G game defensively, but trying to force that this team is nothing more than the 2016 side who was not only losing scorewise but based on the view of the match against minnows is unwanted in the forum. Yes Skibbe picked Tziolis. But the reason is obvious. He has been playing matches in Saudi Arabia. What every player and skibbe himself said post match is "This season is the hardest because all players are unfit and they were tired after some point." The game was unfair and unlucky based on date. Estonians play in meme leagues of the north that do not stop in Winter. They are 100% match fit while we have Stafylidis, Vellios, Donis(due to injury) with literally 0 competitive playtime since June. Vellios sucks. I agree with you on that I was the only one defending him so far but he ruined chance after chance, not only his bad positioning and shots but also chances created by others. No more defending for him, still unacceptable however that noone from the others scored. Donis is an upgrade to the team and with less tight defences his man-to-man ability to go through will shine. And after saying this, my question to you is, what better does Bosnia seem to have in this campaign that ours doesn't, so that we do not deserve the 2nd spot? Losing 5-0 to Belgium or being the worst team against Greece at home and against Cyprus away? Second spot is there for Grabs.Belgium are already in the WC. They will play as relaxed with us as they will with Bosnia next matchday. We are 6 points behind and we need to tie them and score about 20 goals to Gibraltar(not counting the goals to come) to steal their spot.

Like if russia next year is the goal mate. The reasonable goal for this NT is to reach the play offs so we dont downgrade much more in the ranking, and maybe try to step up as well. After that- what we can do or what we cant is all a matter of luck with teams like Spain/Italy/Netherlands/Portugal/Switzerland/Turkey as possible opponents. Just shutting some Bosnian mouths about how we re utter shitte because we ended up 6th last campaign while they managed to not qualify in a more fashionable way is gonna be enough for me. Youth talent exists. WC is gonna be hard for current roster and with many teams stepping up their game. We can be a regular team at Euros since its 24 teams now.

Finally someone reasonable. Suddently the last pot 3 team(Yeah im talking about us) in the beginning of the group draw, can't win a pot 4 team and we re suddently not worthy of existing in the football map. Pathetic posters who are expecting us to play like Barcelona offensively, with a offensive net worth 1/5th of Suarez alone. When we were losing/drawing teams like Finland/Northern Ireland/Faroe Island we didn't have such an appearance. We didn't dominate the game and we deserved to lose. Most of our players apart from Vellios didn't have a bad game. a couple of bad crosses when anxiety kicks in because no other obvious opportunity arises as time goes away is obvious. We werent in a position to afford losing points. But at the end of the day. we re two points in front of Bosnia, we both have to play Gibraltar and Belgium. If only one team f*cked up today the group would be decided. With both teams losing points we re literally in the same situation, and maybe slightly better. Estonia is a solid side defensively in the second round. Belgium only managed to score 2 against them , as many as we , and they didnt; play in the middle of the winter.

Skibbe did the obvious. Made sure we re not hit on the counter , as myrwdias ranieri did. Look at the statistics. 0 shots on target for Estonia. Oh, look again 0 shots in general (1 shot recorded in their statistics which was no shot but a desparate defense from a counter attack). As I said. Skibbe did what Ranieri could not. Not allow a minnow team to piss on us and go away with a 3 point. Did we play good? No. Did you expect us to play at our top potential without Mitroglou, Papastathopoulos , Torosidis? Toro is our second top goalscorer in this campaign with two goals and two assists. He has been part of 40% of the goals we ve scored. They played full defensive and were very disciplined. Our players made terrible mistake when it comes to offside. Many chances ruined because they were literally a finger or two offside. The referees were excellent, something unexpected from such a low quality championship like Israel. Skibbe's only mistake was the defensive midfield duo. He wanted two players who were only defense orientated. This totally secured not conceding, but in a matter also reduced our number of attacking players.

Unbelieveable thinking. This is literally Skibbe's first bad result and you re already talking about how shitte of a coach he is. Let me guess your team, Panathinaikos?

Are you sure its skibbe's selections and not EPO's? Last time I checked Ranieri wasn't "allowed" to make his own picks of players. Skibbe is an excellent coach, when it comes to tactics and taking the best from the players. Today we were not only unlucky to miss 3 key players in Mitro, Sokratis, Torosidis, but also had the Estonian defenders and Goalkeeper at his best day. I expect Bosnia to manage nothing more than us today in Talinn.