ethniki: offense

[aekrossoponti]

its up to otto to use the players he calls but when i see that our midfield consists of basinas, zago, kara, and stelios- i would say we have on true offensive midfielder and thats stelios.basinas and zago are defense minded. karagounis, at least to me, is no offensive midfielder. he cannot create plays on a regular basis. he may have moments of brilliance but to me he is a fighter, a midfield pitbull...a jens jeremies, gattusso style or at his best a veron style player who works and controls the midfield. he does have good technique and a good shot but at the end of the day hes not a "10"!...therefore it striked that he wears the 10 with benfica.

if i see that adding to that charisteas doesn t exist on field when there are no crosses, which has been the case in the last games. and vryzas is trying and fighting but lacks assistance and luck and oftentimes speed...then the reality is that we have only stelios as an offensive option. and stelios would have to be maradona05 for the ethniki to work. he is not, of course...

so i think the problem is not karagounis, he s the player he is. he has not disappoined me but the problem is the team we field.

when i see that against albania we started more defensively than against portugal in the final, i wonder. to tell the truth i was very very frustrated when i heard the endekada for the first albania game. otto started dabizas, who thank god was injured at the start of euro otherwise things would have gone differently, for the injured dellas. we played with

nikopolidis-giourkas, kapsis, dabizas, katsouranis, fyssas-basinas, zago, kara-charisteas, vryzas

to me we had no offensive player on the team. and we paid. as a matter of fact katsouranis is not a central defender and we paid for that move on ottos behalf many times. after we were down 2-0 otto brought stelios and tsiartas, who created the 2-1 and then we played monoterma with the known unfortunate result but still. this endekada showed that we were not trying to chance the euro formula at all. this was the team we had against chechs in albania!!!c`mon...

in ukraine charisteas was injured and very unlikely to be able to play. in the training also papadopoulos got injured and was knock out for the crucial game in kiev. remember after getting just one point in the first two we needed to produce in kiev. did otto nominate another striker? no...we started with just vryzas. thanks to a moment of brilliance from tsiartas we managed to at least draw. otherwise our world cup campaign would campaign would have ended in the third game. and rightfully so...

so its obvious we had an offensive problem. did otto try to solve it? no...at the latest he could have tried something as we competed in the conf.cup but he didn t. instead he started vryzas every game even though he had his arm injured, kafes, who to me is able to play a "10" position, which he has done in the past with paok, has not played a minute and pap, gekas had some garbage time. zagorakis and karagounis were in league action we didnt even look for replacements. ok give the euro heroes their game against brazil, but lets experiment against the japanese at least...

at the momentz the only offensive midfield players i see apart from stelios are lagos, kafes, and masmanidis from german second division team karlsruhe. unfortunaly masmanidis plays for germanys u-21 and if the greeks dont make a move on him, he may be lost...

[rodoj]

I agree with most of what you said. A thought: how long it would take to naturalize a player like Eki (provided of course he would be itnerested) as he would be the perfect "10" for us and chances of him playing for ARG are slim.

All too often you see other NT with players who originated from elsewhere and so why not ? A player like Eki or even Djorgevic would have been in my view an excellent way to make up the void. Yes, I know this will cause a number of you to howl but me being anit-Greek and baout mercenaries but some players may actually want to become Greek.

Thoughts ?

[aekrossoponti]

well we i had a naturalised brazilian in the squad once...although rumours were he had a greek mom...his name was batista and he was a striker.

but i think if we do decide to go the foreign way it has to be someone who feels a connection to greece. see batista still lives in greece, spoke greek. someone like soares or djole would be possible to some extent although i prefer real greeks. as for eki to me he lacks the connection. i dont know how long it would take but it could go very quickly...

on the other hand i dont think otto and eki would get along.remember otto had a big problem with mehmet scholl in his bayern spell.

i think we should stick to greeks although it is evident that many teams go foreign.