Greece - Ukraine

[olympiakos1221]

mitroglu is only in because he is somewhat german :LOL:

[Genome]

I bet Ninis will come on for two minutes!

[Sharpos]

We're done diddli done for :( The guys are gonna freeze their balls of in ukraine, just waiting for the torture to be over :tdown:

[Genome]

Ukranians winning time now ...

[drakos13]

id give us a 25% chance of qualification if we finish 0-0, and I'm being generous.

Horrible. Crap.

Rehagel, killed our offense by making two useles subsititutions.

Salpi-Gkekas make all the chances, take them off for people who either blow megatons, or have barely played at senior level.

Again, No Ninis - and his clever pass was definitley needed.

Rehagel, just leave.....Ukraine is going to the World Cup.

[Genome]

Header out from Kyrgiakos.

[Genome]

End of the game.

Good game from our players, bad reffing for both sides, and 0-1 or 1-1 in Ukraine would be enough to progress.

[olympiakos1221]

rehagel fire him noww he doesnt even put a sub in where ninis was needed he took two of the best pplaeyrs out and put in an old fart and a player who is very inexperienced in. He doesnt no what he is doing anymore

[Sharpos]

I bet they celebrate in ukrain tonight. I think it's 80 - 20 % in their favour to qualify now. Why on earth did you make such stoopid subs otto?

[Euro2004]

Haristeas on the right ahead of Ninis. I wouldn't have brought Haristeas on for Gekas anyway but I can understand the logic, why move him to the right afterwards though? Otto needs to go, unfortunately Bajevic would be even worse and he's the obvious replacement. We're bad now but there are som very dark years ahead.

[Sharpos]

rehagel fire him noww he doesnt even put a sub in where ninis was needed he took two of the best pplaeyrs out and put in an old fart and a player who is very inexperienced in. He doesnt no what he is doing anymore

I disagree on mitruglu. Togheter with gekas they'd be a dangerous pair i believe. Now we will never know, thanks to ze german.

[athinaios]

If by some miracle Greece goes through, they'll keep Rahhagel and we'll see another disaster in the world cup as we saw last euro. Worst team there. So, maybe I wouldn't mind not going. I can't expect another miracle in S. Africa with Otto at the helm

Please, don't tell me what Otto has done in the past for Greece. I KNOW! And, I totally appreciate his contributions. But, he should have retired after euro 2004.

[Guest geok]

Some people say that is a good result, well it is the best draw result we can get, but it is better for Ukraine. We have to prove that we are better in Ukraine, who now celebrate because they are the favourites.

Otto did not have a good game. I think Salpi was excellent and Gekas was good, but he made bad substitutions, if he should take someone else it should be Samaras, Mitroglou for Samaras yes, but the substitutes were poor.

Someone said that we now go for two results, but I have seen this film before: we wanted two results with the Swiss and from the three we got the longest...

Lets see what happens on Wednesday and then we can say more.

[as5664]

It's not 80-20, it's 50-50. In fact, we play better away. It shouldn't make a difference. The Ukrainians have to play in the cold too. It's not like they're reptiles, humans don't get "used" to the cold.

The Gekas sub was good. They were marking him all night, and we needed someone with height in the center. I'm not a fan of Charisteas, but I don't mind him coming in as a late sub, like tonight. He did make one good shot, which was saved by their keeper.

Honestly, I thought the team played their best ever. We missed a lot of good chances. The Ukrainians are mostly a counter-attacking team. I don't see anything impressive.

I think a tie in Ukraine should see us through.

[drakos13]

Not a good game. We were not threatenting, and we became LESS threatening after Axristeas comes on. We had some decent opportunities first half, and Rehagel deconstructed what was actually starting to work.

I just don't understand, how Rehagel thinks this is fair to the team, to take Gkekas off like that, our by far top player and scorer, when we need goals, in favour of a player who simply doesnt cut it at the national level anymore, let alone the club level.

The referee was terrible. Another UEFA failure.

The fans were awful. National pride is totally uncool in Greece..

Rehagel sucked.

Ukraine did fine.

Theyre more talented than us, and they will have better fans, more attacking, and favourable conditions to win and celebrate their going to the World Cup. They deserve it quite a lot more than we do.

I honestly don't see anything but a 2-0 or 3-1 loss in Ukraine. Ukraine will be better than today, we will be worse than today. Ukraine has the home advantage, better fans, and cold weather (its not really that bad this time of year).....etc

Best of luck to Ukraine in South Africa.

[mangas21]

notwithstanding the fact that we did not win, anyone who thinks the team played poorly or that otto had a poor game was not watching the same game i did....

1. this aint latvia folks

2. the team played their ASSES off.....best effort i have seen in a long time

3. we took it to them......more than i have seen in a long time.....

4. any tie in ukriane other than 0-0 we go through

otto:

1. no avraaam

2. no avraaam

3. no avraaam

4. waited until late to sub...in this instance a more creative mid would have been preferable....the other guy is invisible (tziolis/matzios) i get those ghosts confused)

5. came out with a decent lineup..resisted haristea starting (god he is so awful)

6. had the balls to put mitro in...u al bellyache "young guys young guys" and when he does you find another reason to belleyache..

this was a talent issue.....not an otto issue....no way.....did u happen to see the fake mitro put on his defender to create space? ok he was trying to score in ukraine, but so what....did u notice how OBVIOUS his quickness was compared to most of the other guys? our guys were given plenty of room to operate - plenty and they were surely close on many chances, but they just lack that one or tow guys with speed and skill to put more pressure on the D and create more space

we miss torosidi BIG time..he could have been a difference maker

if we cant tie them in ukraine then we dont deserve to go through, so we dont HAVE to win....it would have been nice to have won but in any circumstances all our goals now count for 2.......

relaaaaaxxxxxx its not as bad as you all are making it out to be

[as5664]

Nice post Mangas. I was glad to so papastathopoulos in D. Also Moras made some pretty nice plays. I agree this was one of our best performances in a long time. I didn't think Ukraine was anything impressive. I didn't see this superb attacking. They made most of their chances on the c/a, the rest of the time they seemed out of sync. They are the ones under pressure of their own fans, not us. I still give it 50-50 in Ukraine.

[jarvis1981]

http://ca.weather.yahoo.com/forecast/UPXX0...X0016.html?Kiev

Here is the weather in the Ukaine .....hopfully it rains on the wednesday and makes the field sloppy. This takes away the Ukraine skill advantage.

Want to see Mitroglou play next game even it's only in the 2nd half. He caused some problems up front the UKS were worried about him. Also want Ninis in at some point.

It's an uphill battle but you never know. See you all next game.

[Euro2004]

The fans were awful. National pride is totally uncool in Greece..

Are you finally going to admit that the NT games should be moved from Athens?

[Deuce]

I agree with Mangas in that the pressure is on Ukraine. Remember, they came away from this match with no away goals, which is huge for us. We're not an offensive juggernaut, but neither are they. They essentially are a counterattacking team with very little success on the international stage. If Otto plays it tight - WHICH HE SHOULD - and we play solid defense, forcing them to take chances - WHICH THEY WILL HAVE TO - we have a great shot. My prediction is that we wear them down to a 1-1 or 2-2 tie and leave them looking ahead to Euro 2012....

[as5664]

Whether or not they play in Athens might have to do with a legal obligation. They may have a contract with Oaka, and so may not be able to play elsewhere without incurring liability. I'm not sure though.

[mangas21]

i have been a honest critc of this team when i thought it was warranted.....its tough because i am probably a nuttier fan than most...but .....today i think was a very vyer good effort...

although i think this is not as bad as it seems, I really think (maybe someone can back me up or disagree with me) but i think a BIG reason why they looked out of sync except for a few counters was that we PUT THE OFF PRESSURE ON THEM...they were forced play more guys back because we had a bit more of an offensive mindset....best D is a good O........so what concerns me now is that since otto obviouslt knows that any tie (other than 0-0) we go through, HE MAY RESORT BACK TO 11-0-0 formation....and if "best D is a good O" theory did in fact contribute to todays result, playing for the tie may cost us - because today i think we definately played to win...(or more accurately we played to win, not "not to lose")

thoughts?

[Deuce]

Maybe not 11-0-0, but they should definitely play more conservatively and not take any stupid chances. We're not Brazil - but neither are they. The pressure is on them to create chances, which will play into our defensive/counterattacking sensibilities.

[Akritis_1944]

2 things:

1) Ukraine is not better than us regardles what happens in the return.

2) Otto has to go for the good of our NT.

[IRAKLIS]

First of all I want to say I think the ethniki did well for not having, amanatidis, seitaridis, or torosidis available. We do not have much depth unfortunately so you have to look at things in perspective.

I felt that the game was sucessful for a variety of reasons, first off WE DID NOT CONCEED A GOAL! This is huge, would you rather have won 2-1??? Look at russia, now they go to Slovenia who knows what can happen?

Not letting a goal in is huge, historically Greece has always played better on the road, so I am very optimistic about our game. I felt that Greece had about 3 very good chances that could have gone in with no doubt on another day, we could have been up 2-0. We did not play some crap team today, this is a team that drew ukraine 2 times and beat England and they only conceeded 6 goals in qualification.

Some of you here do not understand why Mitroglou came in for Salpigiddis and Why Xari came in, it makes perfect sense! How many goal scoring chances did we create playing hte ball on the ground????

How often have you seen Greece string passes around comfortably and pop goals in ? I can only think very very few. Therefore since Greece was relying on crosses, longballs and set pieces to score, he took out two small strikers and put in two tall strikers that have a larger probability of beating the strong ukranian defense in the air.

Overall I think Greece played a solid game and executed there game plan, the only time Ukraine looked dangerous to me was on the counter attack. On wednesday Ukraine is forced to make some serious decisions, "do we attack and make ourselves suseptible to a counter attack by the greeks" or "do we sit back and counter attack the greeks".

Either way Greece is in an ideal position cuase we will definately be hunting for a goal, if they sit back greece will attack, if they attack us and we sit back I have confidence that our defense is strong enough to stop their attack.

Be positive nothing has been lost, ellas ole!