georgelaz

beat me to it! fetfatzidis with an assist against a full strength Barcelona. anyone who doubted me that he should still start and that his league is irrelevant can now bow down as if I am allah (semi-kidding) our weakness is the wings. holebas LW. Fetfa RW. Problem instantly dissolves and we have nifty wing play. Fortounis in the centre. Mitroglou striker. Tachtsi and Samaris deep CMs. Our obviously stacked defense. And we have an omadara pedia. http://www.fullmatchesandshows.com/2016/12/13/al-ahli-vs-barcelona-highlights-full-match/ over here in toronto giovinco is a star for toronto fc and i think is getting some national team love despite playing in a weaker league. sometimes playing in a weaker league is very good psychologically. you get used to winning so much that when you play a big team, you'll put that extra hustle to level the score cause you're so used to winning that you GO for it. whereas if psychologically you think you're the weaker team, losing by a small margin is 'respectable'

kpaps is a beast. we put the guy in RB and CDM and he was a killer. He has that classic greek golden generation feel.

I think Turkey is a bit better than us, they're underachievers. We can take them but they have way more flair in attack. Their defense isn't too shabby either, Toprak is solid. Also they have Ozil And Gundogan who play for Germany. Luckily, in tournaments I think defense wins championships. Yes they have a great attack but they aren't near the level of attack that Spain, or Argentina possess. So if they're fighting fire with fire, they'll lose 9 times out of 10. Whereas we can absorb the attack and just capitilize on a few mistakes. Also mind you, they have a population of 80 million and we have 11 million.

realistically we aren't any worse than top 30 imo

an Austrian exchange student today my gym was rocking a Sokratis dortmund jersey. So I had to give him props and I told him that he's from the same city as myself in Greece :)

most players soccer prime is 25-28. The male body and brain in general doesn't full mature until 25, actually. CB A bit later 28-31. GK a bit more 30-33. IMO

that's chill, but they'll kill us on the wings if toro and staf play that high up. they have super fast attackers. faster than anyone on our starting 11

I'd do something like this against belgium Karelis Fortounis Tachtsi Samaris Maniatis Staf Tzavella Sokratis Manolas Torosidis Karnezis basically park the bus and hope karelis can get a break away. even though im a mitroglou fan he'll be useless on the break which is 9/10 is the only chance we'll score against belgium. mitro would be good on a set play tho kinda similar to how we played against turkey. we saw how useless mitroglou was playing defensive football. his best games are when we're playing highly attacking which is rare vs. romania, costa rica, hungary. karelis is ambitious and will make tons of runs and he's an engine so he'd be the perfect lone striker. he's not afraid to take lots of shots mitroglou is a bit of a perfectionist and prefers to really get a perfect strike which makes him not even take the shot as he gathers his feet and gets into position.

In reality though. I think if he were to go to Asia to play soccer he'll be more rested from less competitive football and his inner warrior would have to step up for the ethiniki because that's his only chance at true competitive football. Even the few times fetfa played when he was in arabia he looked sharped. talent is talent at the end of the day. just playing devil's advocate because obviously playing in a better league is more likely to reach potential and be sharp. If you put messi or ronaldo to play in qatar though they'd still likely be world class imo. maybe if they went under 25 it would stifle their growth.

hope that isn't true. fetfa through us under the bus by doing to saudi arabia when we're desperate for wingers lol we can't have dm problems now too

got an 86 in form on fifa. we have one of the best defensive duos in game now. top 5 perhaps http://www.futhead.com/17/players/51013/sokratis/

a draw against belgium isn't far fetched. if we play 3 cb's and 3 cdms (maniatis, samaris, tachtsi). tzavellas as a lb gives us 4 cb's too. He is stronger defensively than holeba or staf, so thats the nice thing about him. if i was booky id imagine it'd be 65% belgium win 25% draw 10% greece win essentially a 1 in 3 chance to pickup some sort of point and we have the opportunity twice. bosnia already lost their game, so we're in the drivers seat at least.

is mitroglou is apparently double footed. so him on the right with karelis on the left can really confuse goal keepers. essentially two left footed strikers.

guys Samaris is crucial. Only because I don't want to change my avatar. lol jks but yes he should be a box to box katsourani is his prime type player!

left footed and killer shot. I think he'll take a while to settle though and we have no margin for error now.

oof kone would be terrible on the wing. he has a better cross than kareli but less pace and his shooting is best when it's front on. we have a winger crisis

I don't. but if he's going to start that's where he'd be useful. he'd wouldn't be useful anywhere else really. fortounis however can do well in lcm. someone else on here was wanting him to play deeper as a playmaker, as well. in order to maximize the best out of all our players collectively, might be a good move.

if kone becomes a starter, he should be the cf/cam. fortounis should be slotted in LCM .

wales was a joy to watch. in tournament style games, any team can win because only 90 minutes of magic is needed so might as well get everyone involved = more surprises. I think Europe should be expanded to two top teams and third playoff rounds for the world cup. That extra round will have a lot of teams go far that wouldn't otherwise. heck, portugal benefited from the extra round and won the whole euro. they wouldn't have made it past knockouts in traditional format. goes to show you how fine the margin is in tournament football.

the thing is, if anyone is going to get points off belgium, it's us. bosnia plays more attractive football but they're never going to have our pedigree because defense wins championships unless your spain or brazil type caliber. so people talk smack about our ethniki, but numbers don't lie. (besides that hickup euro campaign, which hopefully we can slowly forget)

this is the problem with the serbian alliance. serbs are definitely cool to us, but they're hot heads and they put us into messes that we've transcended long ago. Greece is definitely more enlightened than the rest of the balkans, hence why we're more akin Western Europe eg) Portugal. If fans brought provactive signs to a Germany vs. Greece match we'd just taunt each other and raise the drama for the game. Serbs and Bosnians have a lot of losers and criminals around though and murdering and stabbing is blase and casual to them. I hope nobody gets hurt.

most of our strikers seem to struggle at the NT level until after a lot of caps. Vellios and Diamantakos haven't looked any better than Klaus.

kolossos that's a good idea. and dean don't be a dick. I openly say which fifa line ups i use but I'm not one dimensional and I watch a lot of greek soccer. bakasetas and kone are very similar players. bakaseta has a better first touch and interplay, kone is better in virtually everything else. been following our nt and greek superleague till just before our euro win. also fifa is pretty spot on with their ratings although some people bitch about them. if you take a peak at them. http://www.futhead.com/17/nations/greece/ also mantalos/kaltas didn't get on fifa until way later and I commended his play. I could only know that cause I watch superleague. you can get highlights too on novasports

we can really get a draw against belgium if we stay focused. very exciting campaign.

also I think Kone should have a presence in our NT. At least as a super sub. He plays regular in Italy for years now. Inserting Bakasetas they're kinda like the same player. Although Bakasetas is a cool last name and nice eyes. But they're both slowish for a forward, decent finishers, cf/mids.