Chelsea - Olympiakos

[Guest TheLegend]

here's my take on your comment - almost 10 years ago, olympiakos away to juventus was on espn. olympiakos was flattered by a 2-1 loss (last minute olympiakos penalty that peruzzi even got a hand to), juve bossed the match ala chelsea yeasterday.

since then, olympiakos has gotten tens of millions of drx./euro from CL appearances, and the truth is: that the gap between the olympiakos of 1999 against a top euro side in juventus is the same or even worse than the 2008 olympiakos against a top euro side in chelsea.

this points to inept management and the lack of any type of football accumen/plan from the director - either louvaris and now ivic. it's idiotic, west ham united invest some 2.5-3 million euro a year in their class academy. olympiakos doesn't have that kind of money?

the truth is, olympiakos rely upon greek players schooled in football from lessor greek sides (most sides don't even have floodlights and can only practice at dawn/dusk in the hot summer) and the gap of talent/skill is just painfully evident when olympiakos play in europe. to me, this is the #1 reason olympiakos fails in europe.

rosenborg grooms home-grown talent. rosenborg drew chelsea 1-1 last fall. olympiakos neglects it's academy and relies upon foreigners to pull a tiny amount of respect in a 3-0 loss.

case closed.

who are olympiakos 3 best home-grown current prospects? kyriakos papadopoulos (centerback), kosta mendrinos (midfield) and lefteris matsoukas (forward). let's see what happens to this generation....we don't even know if they are getting proper coaching.

arsenal have an entire team of foreigners and are successful, they don't even spend that much on some of their players, we need better scouting and training someone like arsene wenger managing in greece would do wonders for our league

yes, but this is easy to rebut:

- greece is not england in terms of potential gate, t.v. and advertising receipts, to get top foreign talent.

- wenger is 1 in a million, in terms of finding and developing talent. olympiakos has andreas niniadis out scouting europe for 'talent'. is that a good or bad thing?

- the absence of homegrown english arsenal/chelsea..etc. players will bite them in the end. it's already had a negative effect on the men's england side and the health of english football...this is currently debated and accepted by most.

shevchenko cost chelsea what, 40 million euro? and shevchenko played last monday with the reserves. a similar mistake in the greek league would bankrupt a side.

Your 100% wrong on the absence of home grown ENGLISH players biting them in the end. They have alot of their team as homegrown. Wasnt fabregas with Arsenal since he was very young?

homegrown english is different in the EPL.. If the EPL was only english it would suck and Olympiacos would look like the best team to ever grace the earth playing teams like Chelsea with only english...

English players are not the best in the world. You and tommy smith need to get over this..

[DUDE]

here's my take on your comment - almost 10 years ago, olympiakos away to juventus was on espn. olympiakos was flattered by a 2-1 loss (last minute olympiakos penalty that peruzzi even got a hand to), juve bossed the match ala chelsea yeasterday.

since then, olympiakos has gotten tens of millions of drx./euro from CL appearances, and the truth is: that the gap between the olympiakos of 1999 against a top euro side in juventus is the same or even worse than the 2008 olympiakos against a top euro side in chelsea.

this points to inept management and the lack of any type of football accumen/plan from the director - either louvaris and now ivic. it's idiotic, west ham united invest some 2.5-3 million euro a year in their class academy. olympiakos doesn't have that kind of money?

File mou this is an over-simplified analysis. The top teams now monopolize the top players by spending so many millions. The gap between the footballing elite and everyone else has grown, it's not just Olympiakos. Look at the way Lyon started to catch them up a few years ago (as did PSV), where are they now?

Ajax has the best youth academy in Europe, where are they now?

Arsenal is known for it's excellent young team... the only ones that are products of the Arsenal youth academy is Hoyte & Gibbs. The rest, i.e. Fabregas, Senderos, Denilson, Djourou, Traore, Walcott, etc, were all bought from other clubs.

Greece's u-19 team did brilliantly and displayed some very good young talent. Olympiakos' young players are also very talented for their age: Mitroglou, Papadopoulos, Mendrinos, Katsikoyiannis, etc. And Graeme Souness (who has been at Liverpool, Newcastle and Fenerbahce, and is well travelled around the Prem and Europe) said on Skysports that Olympiakos' facilities are as good as any other teams in the world!!

The talent is there, but the problem is developing that talent and the fact that the league isn't great doesn't help. We need a national training facility, like Clare Fontaine in France. So you're right in that we should go and get top coaches from around the world to work on our youth, and it's EPO's job to lobby the top clubs and the government for funding for such a thing. But even England doesn't have a national centre of excellence like Clare Fontaine, so it's not as if we've been left behind by the whole world.

Olympiakos' biggest signing this year was Belluschi, whereas Chelsea spend that amount on a 16 year old that won't make an appearance for another 5 years! The nature of football has changed. It's all changed now and the gap between the elite and the rest is likely to increase... what we really need is a Marxist approach to football where "Big Clubs" dominate so much (thesis) that the Poorer clubs revolte (antithesis) leading to a new Proletariat Euroleague (synthesis)... VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!! :LOL:

[Akritis_1944]

Torosidis: 7: Stumbled on the second goal but overall showed great athleticism. He has the potential to go all the way to the top.

Belluschi: 9: If that goal had gone in I'd have given him a 10. His movement was incredible, always finding space. His skill was amazingly exciting and he worked sooo hard. Remember that slide tackle that almost broke their midfielder in half (I think it was on Lampard). So happy to have him with us. He'll become as big a cult figure as Castillo was.

The Fans: 10: Nothing else to say but, the best! No one else can do what our fans do. Fenerbache, Galatasary, Liverpool, Boca, kai m*****es... They are NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING compared to Gate 7. Completely different level. Those fans deserve some CL glory gamoto.

I couldn't agree more with your opinions.

Especially about the fans. I only saw the last 20 mins when we already 3 down and the fans were drowning out the unwashed English with their passionate chanting.

My heart beat with pride at that passion. The thrylos fans should have been applauded by every official connected with the club.

[Omonoia9]

Yes, aek66, I do believe Chelsea leaving Peiraia with nothing is amazing. I fully expected us to get raped BOTH legs. We were supposed to be the team everyone in our group would sh*t on. Yes, I would say we are now on the map. I was expecting 3rd at best and I'm an Olympiakos fan. All my friends who like Chelsea never even heard of us and I proudly told them Olympiakos was a club from Piraeus, 35 time champs, etc. Teams will no longer be happy to have us in their group. Yes the sting of a 3-0 loss is bad, but looking how far we came, I'm d*mn proud of Olympiakos, and now we as fans must continue to stick by our team as they chase down the Greek title!

[aekrossoponti]

i just wouldn t say its all bad.

we can summarize this euro season by looking at olympiakos pathetic showing in chelsea or bayern raping aris. OR we can look at aris beating saragoza, larissa throwing blackburn out, olympiakos beating bremen twice, being the better team one man dopwn in the bernabeau. it depends on your perspective. pao managed a draw in ibrox whereas bremen got beaten 2-0.

i agree the greek league is still very much inferior to the great european leagues but this season was very succesful. as for turkey being better? i agree they are more into playing attacking football and probably have more skilled players. lets also not forget though that a sinificant percentile of turkish football heroes grew up (footbally speaking) in germany. plus when we talk about fenerbahce lets ot forget besiktas who got raped by liverpool. its not that simple.

given what you can expect from greek clubs, i d say we overachieved this season and i definitely see an improvement to the past few years. and think the future looks a bit brighter. this doesn t mean that i am happy with aeks disappointing uefa run ( and i dont mean getafe here) or olympiakos showing at the bridge.

[DUDE]

I am watching Barnsley vs Chelsea in the FA Cup, 25 mins gone still 0-0.

I am so ashamed of our performance against them after watching this. Passionate but intelligent pressing, an organized backline, some nice short passes, some great athleticism, etc. Barnsley are unlucky not to be winning. I hope the Olympiakos boys are watching and are feeling ashamed because this Barnsley team would have battered the Olympiakos team of Wednesday night. I hope Antzas, Patsa, Ledesma, Stoltidis and Djole all sit down and watch this game! Passionless malakes gamoto!!!

Btw, Barnsley just hit the post and missed a 1 on 1 (tet a tet). Chelsea are getting dominated by sheer passion, athleticism and organization.

And Barnsley have just scored!!! 66 mins. :LOL: I hope Olympiako players are watching this!

[Irlandos]

What do you think, that Barnsley are a bunch of koroida to gobble down three goals? :huh:

[dark_horse]

Takis Lemonis got the axe, not that good of a move. Kokkalis should have waited till the end of the season to decide that. :nono:

I was real busy after I saw Olympiakos getting trashed by the better side (Chelsea), so I didn't get a chance to comment on the match now that is already over.