Road of Opportunities in the Ethniki

Road of Opportunities in the Ethniki

By Greg Gavalas

It’s been a whole 10 months since we saw our beloved Ethniki in action and for a change we had good reason to feel optimistic in our performances and results, that is since John van’t Schip (JVS) and his team took over the helm of the dogged team and were able to work minor miracles by eliminating players who didn’t possess the right attitude and move to players with the right attitude and frame of mind when it came to representing Greece.

So far JVS’s ways have paid off, five games without defeat, its been over 4 years since we have done that, and whilst we ended 2019 with much promise the two recent games against Slovenia and Kosovo for the UEFA Nations League created positives but also some questions until our next matches in October.

In both matches we saw JVS deploy his now traditional rolling 4-2-3-1 which converts to 3 at the back in attack which frees up right and left back in attack as we saw with Mihalis Bakakis and Dimitris Giannoulis in both games.

This worked well although would be great to see Kostas Tsimikas on the left and Lazaros Rota in the future, more so the latter as Greece is lacking in right back options.

An area of question is the Centre Back position, the sudden elimination of Kostas Manolas, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Pantelis Hatzidiakos has seen our options remain decent but nowhere near the depth we saw on paper for so many years, and I say that in a way as we know what our results looked like even with Manolas and Papastathopoulos back there.

JVS has shown to favour Efstratios Svarnas of AEK Athens which I have to admit surprises me. Svarnas is a decent centre back and we can get away with it against teams like Slovenia and Kosovo however he is a player easily beaten in the air whilst his passing skills are still developing.

The experience for him does him no harm but he needs a strong partner next to him like Dimitris Siovas, not error prone and matchless Kostas Stafylidis who started against Kosovo.

The thought of Svarnas and Stafylidis starting against a strong opponent is not great, simply put the Hoffenheim player is not a centre back, those familiar with previous Hellas Qualification campaigns will know of his incorrect decisions that have led to goals for the opposition.

In saying that, there is obviously something in his presence on the team which, for now, can be excused as we continue to head in a new and right direction but if I was JVS, you really need to look at a new “leader of the pack” as even in his natural position, Stafylidis is covered at left back.

In the middle of the field it the former Panathinaikos combination of Zeca and Dimitris Kourmbelis played an average game with Slovenia and there was little improvement against Kosovo, this was one area we were really strong in the latter 2019 games with Kostas Galanopoulos paired with Kourmbelis, this worked as the AEK midfielder has go forward and created another dimension to our attacks, whereas the former PAO combo is two deep laying midfielders with ordinary passing skills, this was highlighted with the amount of turn overs both players caused in both games.

Greece must improve here, Andreas Bouchalakis and Sebastian Vasiliadis are players worth trying in combo with either of the current two and with Galanopoulos looking to return from injury now, hopefully he hits the ground where he left off.

I also think Petros Mantalos can make for the role, he is one of the better Greek distributers with the ball and can add an attacking spark at any time.

The star of the show in the JVS team is none other than Dimitris Limnios, the PAOK speedster has been Greece’s main offensive weapon, proving a constant threat on the right wing and bring a real hungry determined approach to the game.

What JVS needs to do is replicate the form on the left side of the field where we can get stronger and present a whole field of danger to the opposition, this is where I think, Yiannis Fetfatzidis can come in and replicate his league form of many assists and some goals too.

Centrally JVS clearly favours Anstasios Bakasetas, whilst the former AEK midfielder did well last year under JVS, his performances in these two matches resembled the previous 22 games for Greece which didn’t show much. Many times in both games, he needed to get into the box and offer an aerial presence but most of the time he played the ball wide he stayed outside the box leaving, Vangelis Pavlidis in game 1 and Efthymios Koulouris in game 2, easy ducks to mark for the opposition.

Again, I feel JVS must give others an opportunity here, be Mantalos or Fortounis a run in their natural position, in saying that, the latter looked weak and fatigued and will most certainly need to improve for his club.

So as you can see there are some clear areas of improvement JVS and the Ethniki need to look at and focus on, defensively we are ok provided there is a strong CB there, midfield, excluding Limnios has many areas of improvement, and whilst we have seen a big overall improvement, we must now look at how we created all those chances in late 2019 vs the matches today, some players used then made an impact, we didn’t see them now.

There is a fresh core of attacking players like Lazaros Lamprou, Tassos Donis (if he ever regains his form), Fetfatzidis, Tsimikas played more forward and Giannoulis at left back could also make for a mean left side.

It will be interesting to see what JVS does in the future but I believe the above suggestions show some of our strengths and areas we can improve on with personal that is ready to go and this could be needed in the long run.

Hellas Football 

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