Hellas Football

Ivan Jovanovic's squad decisions By Christian Leggas After Greece flushed their 2026 World Cup qualifying hopes down the toilet, many areas of  this team need fixing, which probably came as a big shock to most of the fan base, with one  area being the integration of more youth into the team. It's not like Jovanović hasn't listened to the fans' prayers in this regard during his tenure so  far. He played a big part in convincing young prospects Christos Zafeiris and Konstantinos  Karetsas to turn down Norway and Belgium, respectively, in favour of the Ethniki. Christos  Tzolis has a mortgage on the left-wing position; he rewarded Konstantinos Tzolakis with a  stint as first-choice goalkeeper, Konstantinos Koulierakis is one of our first-choice centre-backs, Georgios Vagiannidis looks trusted with the number one role at right-back, and, albeit  perhaps not as frequently as some would've liked, Jovanović has given more chances to  Giannis Konstantelia...

 Report: Scotland 3-1 Greece By Alec McQuarrie Over an hour before kick-off and the recriminations have already begun. Essentially, supporters are getting their bets in early to claim their winnings at the final whistle with a smug: “I told you so! X should never have started. Why the fuck was Y on the bench? Z has no idea what he’s doing.” For some, the post-match dissection is the main course, and it is served ever so delicious if you predicted the loss before it happened. Even better if you can foresee the culpable parties. It is Greek pessimism at its finest. I even think certain fans are pleased when defeat is dished up, pleased to be proved right. For others, it is protection, plain and simple. When the hurt stretches back 11 years, hope is a hard sell. Hope has been ground down to a fine dust by repeated failures and disappointments, disasters and frustrations, each one more retrospectively predictable than the last. Some fans don’t want the hope. The hope hurts. It always d...

AEL: Back to Square One  By Michael_Vissini It’s been less than 24 hours since the club have sacked Giorgos Petrakis courtesy of  the heavy 2-5 home loss to Volos that was met with strong jeering from AEL fans  during and after the match. The right decision was made to let go of the 37 year old  and I wish him nothing but the best wherever he goes for the young coach. There lies the problem – young. I’m not here to deconstruct Petrakis coaching style  but his inexperience in the Greek top flight was exposed in the litmus test against  Volos. Credit to Volos who were simply outstanding from start to finish and never  stepped out of gear. Even after scoring their fifth, they were still piling on the misery  for AEL and were left with no answer. The problem mostly lies what happened during the summer and the club's purposes  it undertook in order to stay afloat in the Super League. Dating back to the summer, the coaching position was left vacant...

  Arsenal vs Olympiakos:  UEFA Champions League Matchday Two preview By Stephen Kountourou UEFA Champions League League Phase Matchday Two Kick-off Time: 22:00 Greek Time Venue: Emirates Stadium, London Where to Watch: Cosmote Sport 2 HD Some things in life are guaranteed. Death, taxes and Olympiakos drawing Premier League side Arsenal in Europe.  Over the last 15 years, Thrylos have had many memorable matches against the Gunners. Mitroglou’s curling effort in Karaiskaki, the first ever win away against a Premier League side, Giroud's hat-trick, and of course the last-minute winner from Yuessef El Arabi, just to name a few.   Both sides currently have an even win-to-loss record against each other at the time of writing. But due to the format change from the group stages to the league phase, where two teams only play each other once before the knockout stages, that record, unless the full-time result is a draw, could very likely come to an end. After a disappoint...

 Olympiakos vs Pafos FC:  UEFA Champions League Matchday One preview By Stephen Kountourou UEFA Champions League League Phase Matchday One Kick-off Time: 19:45 Greek Time Venue: Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium, Piraeus Where to Watch: Cosmote Sport 2 HD It's that time again. Every year, I wonder whether this will be the final season in which I preview the exploits of Olympiakos in European competition. Should I go on to bigger, better and more interesting topics? Well, it doesn't get much bigger than the UEFA Champions League.  For the first time since the 2020/21 season, Thrylos or any Greek team will be competing in Europe's elite continental tournament, and this was an opportunity I knew I had to write about.  It is also worth noting that Olympiakos became the first Greek side to qualify automatically for the Champions League in exactly ten years, as the club with the best individual coefficient of all the domestic champions involved in qualifying (the domestic champ...

 Greece 0-3 Denmark: These are the games you must win. By Alec McQuarrie At the very least, these are the games you must not lose. In years gone by, hope would replace expectation. But Greece are a different prospect these days and Piraeus expects. In Euro 2024 qualifying, a 1-0 home loss to the Dutch all but confirmed the Ethniki would be forced to circumnavigate via the play-offs, and we all know how that ended. But if Greece are a different prospect to their previous incarnations, Denmark are most certainly a different prospect to Belarus. The first thing to note is that Denmark are big, and I mean BIG. They could be the biggest gang of grocks you’ve ever laid eyes on. Aside from Mikkel Damsgaard - who at 1.8m isn’t exactly a hobbit mind you - every single one of them is 1.85m (6’1”) or above. For context, Greece had seven players in their starting line-up shorter than that. If it wasn’t already patently clear beforehand, this was going to be a physical battle. The second thing ...

Greece 5-1 Belarus: A clean slate By Alec McQuarrie These don’t come around that often. The last clean slate came against Gibraltar in March 2023, the start of a 10-match qualifying campaign that ultimately ended in heartbreak, in failure, in Tbilisi. But it started with a 3-0 win in the Algarve against a team from a rock hanging off the Iberian peninsula. Only three players survive from Greece’s last clean slate: Kostas Tsimikas, Konstantinos Mavropanos and captain Tasos Bakasetas. That alone should demonstrate just how far the Ethniki have come in the last two and a half years. Back then, Christos Tzolis was warming the Norwich bench in the Championship, Christos Zafeiris was Norwegian and Kostas Karetsas was playing for Belgium’s U16s a nd the 17-year-old is making it really, really hard for those of us who are desperately trying not to get ahead of ourselves. His mature, guided finish inside two and a half minutes was a statement: this is not the same Greece as two and a half ye...