Ellada2004

Greece remain at #55 in the rankings. Poyet has to get us back up the rankings with upcoming friendlies and then with the NL.

Crazy finish!

Another VAR check

Will see if those guys are given a chance. If they are playing and in good form then they should be given a chance. I highly doubt we will see Poyet pull a JVS and bring up a guy like Mavrias who hardly got any minutes in the Cypriot league and then got thrown out in a vital wcup qualifier like JVS did.

He was a very fierce competitor. I remember watching him play. Like I said he won’t put up with BS from the players that’s for sure and be a puppet of EPO and take orders on who gets called up and who does not.

Yes he has to get the best in form players playing in their natural positions. Greece are fighting with the big boys of Europe here. I am confident he won’t have baffling call ups like we saw with JVS.

Good luck to Poyet lets hope he starts of well and gets Greece back to the Euros.. Greece play two friendlies in March at Romania and at Montenagro.

Koller did a very good job with Austria during his tenure before he arrived Austria were in rough shape. He had a great Euro 2016 qualification campaign with 9 wins and a draw in a group with Russia and Sweden. I watched them draw Portugal the eventual Euro winners. The loss to Iceland came right at the end of the match as both teams were pushing for a win. Poyet looks a shoe in for the job I would not mind him or Koller they are better choices than some of the other names we have heard pop up recently.

Sportime,gr is saying that Poyet is the front runner for the job. I would prefer Koller as he did a good job with the Austrian NT.

According to sport24.gr EPO are to announce the new NT coach this Thursday. There are also two more names in the mix Marcel Koller and Gustavo Poyet. Koller managed Austria and led them to Euro 2016 and Poyet had a short stint at AEK. Thoughts on these two coaches?

Ya EPO seem to be all over the map with the names being mentioned. Your right they have been interested in a lot of defensive & attacking style coaches. I believe that if Santos were free EPO would hire him immediately as they know what they are getting with him in terms of his success and stability in Greece and at Portugal. Also with some of the names mentioned like Santos and Valverde for example it seems EPO are willing to pay more than 600k per year salary if need be. As for our team as you said we have the quality to be qualifying for major tournaments especially for the Euros. The last two we completely screwed up with coaching hires if you look at Ranieri in 2016 & Ange for the 2020 qualification they had us playing catch up with poor results of the start, especially in Ranieri case with us only picking up 1pt in the first four games which rightfully led to him being sacked. JVS to be fair had a tough group to navigate with Spain as one of the best countries in World football and Sweden always at most major tournaments but his stupidity in his callups, his tactics and playing players out of position cost Greece 2nd place. He pissed away 6pts easily vs the bottom two nations in the group. I am willing to wait awhile longer to see EPO get the right hire. We cant afford to get it wrong again with the coach and Greece have to win the NL group and get up in the FIFA rankings so we get the best possible EURO draw & have a possible playoff spot from the NL if needed.

Wow EPO are looking at Dunga. He was heavily criticized in Brazil for his tactics after there exit at the quarter finals of the 2010 World Cup.

I really wish Donis would take the job if its offered to him. I think he would be able to work really well with the younger players on the team. It seems EPO technical director is keen on hiring one of the Italian coaches mentioned here and Jimenez is also in play.

Greece is going back to Romania. Great memories when we got the 1-1 draw there and clinched qualification to the 2014 World Cup. Should be a couple of good tests come March. PA ME ELLADA!

4 games in 10 days will be tough especially after all the club football the guys will have played but they are doing it because the World Cup will be played in November (which will be strange). Lets hope our key players are all fit and available for these matches.

I think 10 pts would be great though we should be looking to get the full 12. Its going to come down to us vs Northern Ireland and that first match in Belfast will be huge. A win will set us up just fine going into the other matches.

Yes I can see EPO preferring to bring in a more defensive minded coach. They would love to get Santos back behind the bench of the Ethniki but if not for Portugal being in the wcup playoff. I heard they have been looking into Luigi Di Biagio the great former defensive midfielder for Italy. He was the caretaker manager for Italy in 2018 and then managed SPAL.

EPO wants to get someone hired by end of January. I personally don't think any of these 3 guys will be hired. I have a feeling they will go with Jimenez but as I have stated I think Donis would be the best option for the amount of $ EPO can spend. I hope he changes his mind and takes the job.

Apparently EPO are looking at three Italian candidates Gattuso, Walter Zenga, and Christian Panucci. We have heard of Gattuso being mentioned. Zenga has managed a lot of clubs he was a former goal keeper. Panucci most recently managed Albania and is defensive minded in his philosophy. Any thoughts?

Thanks for posting the article. Excellent read. Greece had a great team back then I have seen some of the highlights. Greece beat Portugal with the legendary Eusebio a Portugal team that finished 3rd in the 1966 World Cup that the English stole the trophy. Its a shame we could not defeat Portugal after going up 2 goals in Porto and the game ended in a draw. In 1998 we came so close as well Croatia beat us in Greece with a late goal from Suker and I still remember watching the final match in Athens vs Denmark were a win would have taken us to the Wcup and we were throwing everything at the Danes. Schmeichel was called on to make some big saves and we had chances late that we just could not finish.

As prolific a goal scorer Lewandowski is the farthest Poland have gone with him in a major tournament is quarter finals at Euro 2016 were they lost to Portugal. In 2012 as Euro hosts they failed to get out of the group were Greece and Czechs advanced. In 2014 Poland failed to qualify for the World Cup. At the 2018 World Cup in Russia they were last in there group and the past Euros they did not qualify for the KO round. My point is that Greece in our glory days as EURO champions (love saying that!) did not posses a true world class striker, we had Charisteas who was great with his movement and amazing in the air and lethal in the penalty area. Our strength was from our back line out and our midfield was top notch featuring Karagounis, Katsouranis, Basinas, Zagorakis and Giannakopoulos. A midfield so stacked that the extremely gifted center mid and dangerous set piece taker Tsiartas would mostly come in as a substitute. I believe @Dean97pointed it out that the midfield is our biggest issue as of late we need more creativity and someone to pull the strings. With Fortounis Greece have a play maker and someone with great vision to see the pitch. There are others that could have been called up but were not. Leaving us with Bakasetas as the engine of the midfield that wont cut it over a qualifying campaign and we saw that unfold for the most part these last wcup qualifiers. I would love if we had another Mitroglou like #9 leading the line up top but for the most part he was getting good service from our mids when we qualified for the World Cup. We have Alexandropoulos ready to play and the last coach decided to not give him any time even in the last game with Kosovo were we looked so sluggish trying to breakdown a weak Kosovo side. Also in the previous game at Kosovo 1-1 a game that Greece should put away with more goals the last coach takes out Douvikas who scores in that game with one chance of a nicely played through ball. Not to mention all the work he was doing of the ball that game.

Not on my short list. His one major coaching achievement was getting Albania to 2016 Euro.

Amazing footballer! Its such ashamed he got injured again and we really missed having him in our wcup campaign he is a match winner and I think if the NT had him in the matches especially with Georgia & Kosovo he would have been the difference in those games that ended up in draws. I just hope he can come back fully healthy and regain his form and he will help the Ethniki qualify for the Euros.

Good article. I would like to see Donis take over but he recently said on Nova sport fm that now is not the right time for him to take the job mainly do to all the issues around EPO. He said he would love to one day be the coach of the NT.

Manolas was on Open TV for an interview he said JVS wanted to keep him in his Qatar plan but it never materialized and said that the coach said he had a problematic personality. Manolas said all was proven with the exclusion of Siovas from the NT and that proved JVS behavior was dangerous. He stated he always gave 150% for the Ethniki and would be interested in a return to the NT.