What went wrong?

[NYPAO13]

the problem lies in the entire league.

you bring talented players in & you surround them with several players that just arent good. Therefore they produce less.

You guys keep looking at things from Green, Red, Yellow Blue glasses & miss the point.

As a PAO fan, i realize this, but it seems the gavro fan is in denial. The gavro list is huge, just forgotten, since they have won the league 11 of 12 years, but short sighted

[DUDE]

the problem lies in the entire league.

you bring talented players in & you surround them with several players that just arent good. Therefore they produce less.

You guys keep looking at things from Green, Red, Yellow Blue glasses & miss the point.

As a PAO fan, i realize this, but it seems the gavro fan is in denial. The gavro list is huge, just forgotten, since they have won the league 11 of 12 years, but short sighted

File you're missing the point. Every team has flops, but they also have the BIG players, the cult-figures. Olympiakos have had Rivaldo & Giovanni step up to the plate. AEK had Tsiartas, and if given a proper chance Blanco looks like he could also become real class. But PAO's BIG players have failed in the long run. Why? Is it just bad luck? Is it a mental block? After all, this season PAO have failed to win the league because of mental reasons, nothing else! Is it possible that defeatism is prevelant among the coaching staff and that seeps down to the players? Is it unprofessionalism? (I know for a fact that the last time PAO came to England (the 1-1 with Arsenal) the night before the game they went, as a team, to bouzoukia in London). Is it simply that they've never been good enough (I don't think so because PAO has had some paixtaraes, on paper anyway). So why?

[cyberfish]

the problem lies in the entire league.

you bring talented players in & you surround them with several players that just arent good. Therefore they produce less.

You guys keep looking at things from Green, Red, Yellow Blue glasses & miss the point.

As a PAO fan, i realize this, but it seems the gavro fan is in denial. The gavro list is huge, just forgotten, since they have won the league 11 of 12 years, but short sighted

File you're missing the point. Every team has flops, but they also have the BIG players, the cult-figures. Olympiakos have had Rivaldo & Giovanni step up to the plate. AEK had Tsiartas, and if given a proper chance Blanco looks like he could also become real class. But PAO's BIG players have failed in the long run. Why? Is it just bad luck? Is it a mental block? After all, this season PAO have failed to win the league because of mental reasons, nothing else! Is it possible that defeatism is prevelant among the coaching staff and that seeps down to the players? Is it unprofessionalism? (I know for a fact that the last time PAO came to England (the 1-1 with Arsenal) the night before the game they went, as a team, to bouzoukia in London). Is it simply that they've never been good enough (I don't think so because PAO has had some paixtaraes, on paper anyway). So why?

Dude you are asking the same question Drakos did when he opened the topic. :LOL:

The short and popular answer is" Vardilogiannis family sux

There is much to discuss here though.

Defeatism can creep in when you content, and lose titles for ten years. Many would feel that some of these titles were lost with means other than on-the-field play, and would feel the pre-Rizoupoli team was dismandlude for no reason. Most of the pre-Rizoupoli players are still the backbone of the NT, and European champions.

The club is recovering from what turned out to be a disastrous period of bad talent evaluation (Livathinos?). The turn towards Balkan talent (Zaets) was counterproductive in the long run. None of the players that came contributed what was expected. We are still clearing the roster from the dead wood.

Seric, Statsel, Konstantinou, Boateg are examples of mediocre players that we overpaid, and passed for great talent. None of their careers would have been different if they played elsewhere (Konstantinou at Oly is a good example). Conceicao and Biscan were on their way out of football and were not really interested in playing at a level required by PAO.

Upper management attitude towards the players and fans is taking its toll. The animosity towards G13 is the elephant in the room that has affected the team image and performance. Bitterness is contagious, and fans just love to hate everything the management does, and often they don't react in positive ways. While everyone attributes the loss of some players to management issues, some left heckled by the fans (Basinas, Gekas), and some disgusted with the entire league (Kolka).

On the same topic, V's attitude to treat players as "commodity" openly alienated many players and hurt the team. We are still paying for the departure of Nikopolidis who would have stayed with a little more money, and Kyriakos who would had never stayed no matter how much they paid him.

This stupid attitude extended to our coaches. Things would have been different if Kyrastas had stayed after his first stint with the team. Instead, he was let go and a team that was playing good football had to start over.

Bad evaluation of talent and coaches would get you every time. It's turning around though, so I feel we have to hang tight until next season.

Your point about Rivaldo and Tsiartas is well taken. Great players both of them, but I rank the European champions Karagounis, and Basinas as high.

Finally, I mentioned it before, the team feels like they play against all odds. Look what happened this year. They play their hearts out to get some separation, and the courts hand opponents three free points. Sure they should have still beat Xanthi and Iraklis, but maybe they would if they had the cushion they built on the field available. The point is, Panathinaikos finds themselves on the short end of the stick when court decisions affect the league table (Olympiakos v. Panionios, Olympiakos v. Kalamaria), and you can't expect this not to have an effect on the players psychology.

[DUDE]

Dude you are asking the same question Drakos did when he opened the topic. :LOL:

The short and popular answer is" Vardilogiannis family sux

There is much to discuss here though.

Hey file mou. How are you? We haven't chatted on here for a while.

I'm not asking the same questions exactly, I'm making a statement that I believe that the coaching staff are at fault. Vardinoyianni is a knob, but he has brought in players that were talented, so you can't blame him in the way AEK fans can blame their owners pre-Demi.

Defeatism can creep in when you content, and lose titles for ten years. Many would feel that some of these titles were lost with means other than on-the-field play, and would feel the pre-Rizoupoli team was dismandlude for no reason. Most of the pre-Rizoupoli players are still the backbone of the NT, and European champions.

This I can understand, and I accept. I have no doubt that other factors have influenced the league, and I still cannot understand why PAO dismantled its team when it did.

The club is recovering from what turned out to be a disastrous period of bad talent evaluation (Livathinos?). The turn towards Balkan talent (Zaets) was counterproductive in the long run. None of the players that came contributed what was expected. We are still clearing the roster from the dead wood.

Seric, Statsel, Konstantinou, Boateg are examples of mediocre players that we overpaid, and passed for great talent. None of their careers would have been different if they played elsewhere (Konstantinou at Oly is a good example). Conceicao and Biscan were on their way out of football and were not really interested in playing at a level required by PAO .

I realise that the club acquired dead-wood, as you put it, but where we disagree and where the main point that I am making lies, is that I don't believe that there was a "bad talent evaluation". I believe that the players that were brought in were very good players.

Seric was a good player that got forward well,

Skacel was very talented, but played in the wrong position (at left back, when he's a left winger), still though he didn't perform and he was great again when he left.

Konstantinou had the potential to be as good or even better than Gekas is now. I know football fans forget easily, but there's a reason PAO paid

[cyberfish]

I enjoy your comments and you always bring up good points.

What happened in the game in Rizoupoli had Kolka dumbfounded. The intimidation and hostility, coupled with the sorry state of the Greek league and stadiums were huge factors in his decision to leave. He never flat out said it, but some of his comments in the press at the time showed clearly that he was interested in a league where he could enjoy playing football instead of playing war.

Munch had one amazing season with PAO. He was one of those responsible for us winning the title, but he was getting older, and in his second season he had several injuries but still played well most of the time. I think his age was a factor, and he did not react well to being benched.

After that there was a concious decision to make Panathinaikos a more "attacking" team. At some point our coach (Malezani) decided to load the team for a 3-4-3 formation that never panned out (Seric, Nilsson, Biscan, Conceicao were supposed to be the keys to this formation) and left us so vulnerable at fullback.

Now, l think I understand your question better.

One of the things that Panathinaikos has done is to try to fit players into a system, instead of modifying the system around the best players.

You see, we get midfielders and try to convert them to fullbacks and the opposite. We get AMs and convert them to CMs. We get SS and we try to make them play CF and the opposite.

So in a sense, you are right in thinking that coaching has something to do with players not reaching potential. I do disagree about most of the players you bring up, but there are numerous players who would have done much better if they could play a different position. Epale that you brought up, had a very restricted role as a winger with PAO. He sucked at it. He needed to play more in the middle of the field, but the spots there were taken. Gonzales is a strange case. He is a really bad CM because he can't mark to save his life, and as an AM he is mediocre IMO. As an SS he would do well if there were two strong CF in front, but he never really played in this position.

I don't want it to sound as if the current system is bad. Building the team around your exceptional talent, would work if we did have exceptional talent (the one you mention that could win a game by themselves), but we have not, so the way we play seems appropriate to me with disciplined players in defined positions. I do want to see us expand on this a bit next year (I want to see our wingers and CMs step in the box a bit more often for example) and I hope we spend some money on a dominating AM this summer...

[Guest TheLegend]

wasnt conceicao also a good player but put in a bad position he couldnt play in as well?