Friendly: Egypt - Greece (27 March 2018, Letzigrund, Zürich, Switzerland

[trotsk13]

Encouraging performance today. Especially up front. 

[georgelaz]

glad we got the W. shows how important form was is. laz, bakakis, karelis, staf and pelkas were the stars for me. the keepers did their thing too.

tachtsi shouldn't be starting unfortunately.

Edited March 27, 2018 by georgelaz

[PanagiotisScordis]

A lot of positives to be taken and a tough decision for Skibbe on who will start in the Nations League because a lot of these kids played really well, with passion, energy and confidence. Bakakis was outstanding, as was Lazaros and Stafylidis. Karelis got a nice, simple goal. Pelkas played well always looking to go forward and score. The keepers did well especially Gianniotis. Even Tziolis and Tzavellas had a solid performance. The only thing I would say is that we should take our opportunities because it could’ve been really upsetting if Egypt got a goal in the dying minutes. We should’ve got another goal if not 2. But Well done, much better 

Edited March 27, 2018 by PanagiotisScordis

[PanagiotisScordis]

15 minutes ago, Molon Lave said:

Full Time Greece 1 : 0 Egypt 

Greece will play two more friendlies in June against Iran and Saudi Arabia

Where did you find this information?? It will be good to have these 2 friendlies 

[Boxou]

54 minutes ago, AchillesHeel said:

^^^^sure...against Egypt

they are in the wc while we are not :)

[Antaeus7]

15 minutes ago, PanagiotisScordis said:

Where did you find this information?? It will be good to have these 2 friendlies 

Blackhawk posted it 
He knows the Greek National Football Team info better than anybody else. 

[georgelaz]

egypt is mostly a one man team with salah but still a win is a win and we weren't playing a bunch of our stars either

[Ellada2004]

Nice win today. Bakakis, Lazaros, Karelis and Staf were excellent. Even Tziolis was useful, cut a couple of nice through balls, his only bad moment is when he wiped out late in the game that gave Egypt an opportunity to attack. Egypt had a few offensive flurries early on and near the end of the match. Greece were far better side and without the services of Mitroglou, Sokratis, and Manolas. I don’t see Egypt progressing in there weak group, Uruguay and Russia will move on. What a shame that they along with Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Panama are in the World Cup and we will be watching.

[AEK86]

Caught the last hour, thought we looked ok. We pretty much controlled the game which was a welcome change. Decent build-up play and plenty of running and getting into dangerous spots. That said, we still looked shaky at times and wasn't too pleased with some of the work from the backline. I get that it's the B-side but still. We were fortunate that Egypt were so poor; I know Salah wasn't on the field but were they resting other starters? Cause if not they're gonna have a tough time in Russia this summer...

[kastro]

56 minutes ago, AEK86 said:

Caught the last hour, thought we looked ok. We pretty much controlled the game which was a welcome change. Decent build-up play and plenty of running and getting into dangerous spots. That said, we still looked shaky at times and wasn't too pleased with some of the work from the backline. I get that it's the B-side but still. We were fortunate that Egypt were so poor; I know Salah wasn't on the field but were they resting other starters? Cause if not they're gonna have a tough time in Russia this summer...

We only played with 2 starters (Elneny, Gabr). About 3-4 players today made their international debuts and it showed. Hector Cuper didn't take this match serious at all. 

[kastro]

1 hour ago, Ellada2004 said:

Nice win today. Bakakis, Lazaros, Karelis and Staf were excellent. Even Tziolis was useful, cut a couple of nice through balls, his only bad moment is when he wiped out late in the game that gave Egypt an opportunity to attack. Egypt had a few offensive flurries early on and near the end of the match. Greece were far better side and without the services of Mitroglou, Sokratis, and Manolas. I don’t see Egypt progressing in there weak group, Uruguay and Russia will move on. What a shame that they along with Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Panama are in the World Cup and we will be watching.

Don't see us progressing based on what? A lot of the players today won't be in the final 23. We had our 4th choice keeper playing today for reference.

[gsots]

First game in a while that I really enjoyed. 

Tsiolis and Tzavellas can f right off with their patanant back passes to the goalie weather they have time to go forward or not, they just kill forward play. Tsiolis was ok today, but he thinks he's zagorakis, basinas and tsiartas combined. Pelkas needs to get his head up, made a couple brain dead plays today, but lot of promise there so obv forgivable. Staf is definitely much better when he's allowed to play his position without chains and has a good winger to interchange with, same for bakakis and Laz. Bakakis ran his bag off today, was great to see. Bakasetas just useless, comes out and just constantly cut to the middle with the ball for no reason at times, clogging things up, just wants to shoot, no creativity and no vision to make a pass. 

Was nice to get a win, goalies both made huge saves to get the w. 

If Skibbe let's the young guys spread their wings, and stops playing guys outta position, we may get things turned around finally, cause there's definitely potential to do so sooner than later. 

 

[La Mendel]

Our B side was much better than the A team versus Switzerland. Pelkas, Bakakis, Karelis were really great, Tziolis and the keepers were great too, only the performance of Bakasetas was somewhat poor. A lot of chances and a great goal, lets hope some of the new players will continue to play for the Ethniki.

[Makynia]

Kastro what’s your point? That was our second 11 playing and our 3rd and 4th string goalies. Our coach was trying out our new players as well.

[La Mendel]

The attempts of Tziolis to imitate a deep-lying playmaker and especially to give long balls were laughable though. He is no Pirlo, not even a Katsouranis. That said, his performance was good today (yesterday).

[La Mendel]

In fact we outplayed and outclassed Egypt. There is some hope for the future, lets hope our youngsters like Lykogiannis, Pelkas, Donis will keep developing and eventually will become truly great players like Fyssas, Basinas, Dellas, Karagounis.

[Soprano76]

2 hours ago, kastro said:

We only played with 2 starters (Elneny, Gabr). About 3-4 players today made their international debuts and it showed. Hector Cuper didn't take this match serious at all. 

That's true, a friendly is a friendly but the same can be said for Greece as well. We've been an underachieving, largely uninspired side for the past 4 years so it's nice to see a breath of fresh air and some positive play from our team.

That being said, Salah is on a great run of form so you should be competitive in your group. I wish Egypt best of luck at the World Cup and hope for continued good relations between our countries in the future; after all, we do share a historical and cultural bond.

[Dean97]

First of i don't how people can say this was a good performance. The only positive thing about this game was the result. I believe Tachtsidis and Tziolis slowed the team down a lot. They can't help themselves. Bakakis is better than Torosidis. Pelkas showed more energy and fight in that position. 

We have a problem and that problem is the midfield. Samaris, Tachtsidis and Tziolis should not play at all for this team. Only one can be called up. I'm not sold on Kourbelis either. Zeca is one option to have and the other is a hard decision. 

Our wingers were good. Lazaros, Gianniotas and Donis are talented enough to play on this team. Pelkas can be used there and not Bakasetas. 

Karelis played well. Hopefully Manos gets called up in the next friendlies as the season will be over by then. 

The performance could of been better. Which means the only way to fix this is by playing better players who like to play fast and are a fast themselves. 

The players that did well today were Barkas, Gianniotis, Bakakis, Stafylidis, Lazaros, Pelkas and Karelis. 

Also to note this Egypt team were not that good and we should have scored 4 goals. Also our 2nd team should be our 1st team. Players like Torosidis, Samaris, Fortounis, Tziolis, Tzavellas and Bakasetas should take a seat and watch how real players play. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Dean97

[georgelaz]

karelis, bakakis, staf, laz, and pelkas showed great hunger and urgency that has been lacking in our NT. 

add those to manolas + sokratis + retsos + zeca and we have a team of majority hustlers.

[Boxou]

9 hours ago, Dean97 said:

First of i don't how people can say this was a good performance. The only positive thing about this game was the result. I believe Tachtsidis and Tziolis slowed the team down a lot. They can't help themselves. Bakakis is better than Torosidis. Pelkas showed more energy and fight in that position. 

We have a problem and that problem is the midfield. Samaris, Tachtsidis and Tziolis should not play at all for this team. Only one can be called up. I'm not sold on Kourbelis either. Zeca is one option to have and the other is a hard decision. 

Our wingers were good. Lazaros, Gianniotas and Donis are talented enough to play on this team. Pelkas can be used there and not Bakasetas. 

Karelis played well. Hopefully Manos gets called up in the next friendlies as the season will be over by then. 

The performance could of been better. Which means the only way to fix this is by playing better players who like to play fast and are a fast themselves. 

The players that did well today were Barkas, Gianniotis, Bakakis, Stafylidis, Lazaros, Pelkas and Karelis. 

Also to note this Egypt team were not that good and we should have scored 4 goals. Also our 2nd team should be our 1st team. Players like Torosidis, Samaris, Fortounis, Tziolis, Tzavellas and Bakasetas should take a seat and watch how real players play. 

how come and you say that tachtsidis and samaris shouldn't be called up, while on the other hand gianniotas who showed totally NOTHING yesterday and football league player manos deserve a place on the roster is absolutely beyond me, really. 

[Argy]

14 hours ago, kastro said:

We only played with 2 starters (Elneny, Gabr). About 3-4 players today made their international debuts and it showed. Hector Cuper didn't take this match serious at all. 

We were missing all of our starters too. The difference is that Greece has depth. Our core (Sokratis, Manolas, Karnezis, Mitroglou, Fortounis, Torosidis, Samaris, Zeca) didn`t see the pitch and players like Donis, Lazaros and Stafylidis were subbed off early. 

[AEK86]

Kastro, thanks for the info; I suspected as such. 

Dean, I agree with some of your points but think you're being a little harsh at times. We did show some positive play going forward and our players were a lot less static and predictable than usual. Certainly there was some sloppy, disjointed play but I think some of that also comes down to the crappy conditions and multiple subs. I agree with you that the midfield needs work (been saying that for about 10 years now). If we play a 4-2-3-1, the "2" remains a problem. Besides Zeca none of our guys have put in consistently good performances in that defensive/deeper role. Samaris should be a good box-to-box type but doesn't really get forward enough nor pass the ball well. Tachtsidis isn't mobile enough and seems disengaged at times. Tziolis doesn't even warrant talking about and should be dropped.

As for the others, I liked what I saw from Donis, Karelis, Lazaros. I think Pelkas has promise but is a little rash and needs work. Bakasetas should be a bench player (as should Fortounis when Mantalos comes back). Stafylidis, Bakakis, and (briefly) Lykogiannis also did well. I think Papadopoulos is a bench player at this point and Tzavellas should be dropped. 

Barkas was solid; made the saves when needed. 

 

12 hours ago, Dean97 said:

 

[Dean97]

7 hours ago, AEK86 said:

Kastro, thanks for the info; I suspected as such. 

Dean, I agree with some of your points but think you're being a little harsh at times. We did show some positive play going forward and our players were a lot less static and predictable than usual. Certainly there was some sloppy, disjointed play but I think some of that also comes down to the crappy conditions and multiple subs. I agree with you that the midfield needs work (been saying that for about 10 years now). If we play a 4-2-3-1, the "2" remains a problem. Besides Zeca none of our guys have put in consistently good performances in that defensive/deeper role. Samaris should be a good box-to-box type but doesn't really get forward enough nor pass the ball well. Tachtsidis isn't mobile enough and seems disengaged at times. Tziolis doesn't even warrant talking about and should be dropped.

As for the others, I liked what I saw from Donis, Karelis, Lazaros. I think Pelkas has promise but is a little rash and needs work. Bakasetas should be a bench player (as should Fortounis when Mantalos comes back). Stafylidis, Bakakis, and (briefly) Lykogiannis also did well. I think Papadopoulos is a bench player at this point and Tzavellas should be dropped. 

Barkas was solid; made the saves when needed. 

 

The only reason to be a bit harsh was because of the team we played against. The last time we played well and dominated was against Hungary in 2015 if you remember. We played much better than even thought the score was 4-3. Pelkas was playing also Fortounis and Mantalos. Our fullbacks were Kitsiou and Stafylidis ahich provided more of an attacking threat like the way against Egypt. We have a problem in the defensive midfield position. Zeca is the only one but can't do much with the ball. Taxi, Samaris and Tziolis can't do the job and have been playing poorly. It's because they are slow and not mobile enough. As far as the performance goes against Egypt we could of played better and scored more. Like I said the game against Hungary is our best performance by far and that was 3 years ago. 

[georgelaz]

yeah key attacking figures for us also retired after our last good campaign world cup 2014 gekas, karagounis, samaras (not retired but made himself irrelevant), holebas, kats (even tho he overstayed his welcome)

[Dean97]

On 28/03/2018 at 10:42 PM, Boxou said:

how come and you say that tachtsidis and samaris shouldn't be called up, while on the other hand gianniotas who showed totally NOTHING yesterday and football league player manos deserve a place on the roster is absolutely beyond me, really. 

What have Samaris and Tachtsidis done so special. They've both had only 1 or 2 solid matches side they've debuted. They have 20 something caps. They haven't done anything in terms of assists and are very static. I don't who replaces them but we need 2 better centre midfielders who can move and help the attack instead of sitting back and playing passes with no meaning. 

We have another problem and that is our wingers. We continue to ignore Fetfatzidis for stupid reasons, Samaras has temporarily retired and we continue to player Mantalos and Bakaestas there when clearly they are better as the number 10. Donis and Lazaros are clear options. Pelkas is also better centrally. But if we have to play him there then I don't mind. Gianniotas is a true winger and we aren't exactly blessed with wingers. Also who knows when players like Manthatis and Lamprou develop. 

I say we play with Mantalos as the 10 next game. We continue alternate players like Donis, Lazaros and maybe Gianniotas or Albanis on the wing. Fortounis and Pelkas can be the back up to Mantalos. 

Also Manos is very good even though he plays in the second division. I guarantee you that that he would've scored 10-12 goals this season in the superleague. He can be very clinical.