A Wave of Reaction

A Wave of Reaction

By Greg Gavalas

It was not that long ago, ok well maybe it was, after Euro 2004 days when more so 2008 onwards that I myself was particularly critical of the Ethniki coaches, this includes Otto Rehhagle, Fernando Santos and the biggest culprit of them all, Michael Skibbe.

This generally came from very lacklustre performances, and from squeezing out wins against minnows, playing friendly games with no real new talent and seen the same 11 walk around for much of the match whilst coming away 1-0 winners.

We did have teams of strong character and players with much experience and that was the difference, we made Euro 2008, World Cup 2010 (and won our first game), Euro 2012 as well as the World Cup of 2014, which was our last major tournament.

We then had the huge fall from grace after that, the disaster Euro 2016 qualification campaign (insert clip of past article here) were we wen through 3 coaches, our saving grace was the 2018 World Cup Qualification, this was the last good we saw from Kostas Mitroglou, Kostas Manolas and Vasilis Torosidis to name just a few. The campaign would fall apart in a play off with Croatia who we lost to, 4-1 in Croatia and many mistakes made by Skibbe.

We then had the Angelo Anastadisiadis era which brough on so much confusion and division and by now the team was playing diabolical football.

This was cultivated and finalised when players started to speak out about change that was need, as more and more stories came out it was obvious, we were not going forward with the old stalwart and needed a new direction.

John Van’t Schip was brought in and overnight we saw the team play nice attractive football creating many chances and wins to start with.

We ended a horror 2019 with good wins over Bosnia, Finland and Armenia and you couldn’t be disappointed with the turn around.

Our next challenge was the UEFA Nations League group of Slovenia, Kosovo and Moldova, 3 wins, 2 against Moldova and one against Kosovo were compounded with 3, 0-0 draws, two to Slovenia and one with Kosovo which highlights our biggest issue – scoring goals.

In the final match with Slovenia and even though we were the better team again, we couldn’t convert the 15 shots at goal and 7 were on target.

The result has seen many reactions on social media, a wave of negativity and some positivity in that we are on the right track, on the other hand some can look past the tactical errors of JVS, all in all both sets of views are correct however there is one issue I don’t think we can cry about and that JVS needs to work very hard on, a goal scorer, we simply don’t have anyone in the calibre of a Mitroglou, Fanis Gekas, Giorgos Samaras, Giorgos Karagounis or a Demis Nikolaids and Nikos Machlas of yester year.

We are now looking at midtable options which means we have to work on better service to these new strikers, in general our finishing needs to improve drastically of we are to hit our goals.

JVS and his team have done the hard part, getting the Ethniki to play decent attacking football and dominate most games, let’s not discount this, we were even losing these games 18 months ago, so do I think people throwing their arms in the air, calling team member clueless and just carrying on is too much? Yes I do, however JVS and his team need to fix their mistakes of this campaign before those critics are vindicated come the next campaign which is World Cup 2022 qualification without the Nations League back up that we expected to have.

For JVS, it’s really not that hard BUT they need to act on this and so far, he hasn’t.

Firstly, play a left sided midfielder on the left, Greek wonder kid, Christos Tzolis is a talent we can’t keep on the bench anymore, play him there, not Fortounis, Pavlidis or Mantalos.

We need to move from Tassos Bakasetas, the player is limited in speed, he can give you one good game in five and a great shot in every five games but he is not going to make the difference for us, this is evident in this campaign and although he looked good like all the team did in those wins last year, even before that he really struggled. If we don’t get past this, we are not going to hit our goals, simply put, Fortounis needs to fill this spot.

On the right, Dimitris Limnios has been good but the opposition is onto his game, his is getting marked well now but to his credit he creates space, sadly he is his own worst enemy, his passes into the box are poor and most times don’t find their target, this is compounded by his finishing which is also poor.

I think Giorgos Masouras, Yiannis Fetfatzidis, Anastasios Donis and Kostas Tsimikas played higher up the field can offer new energy and penetration that we need with Fortounis or Mantalos in the middle.

Another hope up front is Taxiarhis Foundas, on fire in Austria, he sadly broke his hand just before our last few important games.

So my message is hang in there, we have made great progression, yes we need to see these changes, along with a Kostas Galanopoulos or Vasiliadis in the CDM position, young gun, Kostas Balogiannis is another player I would keep my eye on, this could help us immensely, and we can score some good future goals and hopefully get us to the World Cup in 2022.

Hellas Football 

Follow @GregGavalas