Hellas Football

Tzolakis. Is it Now or Never? By Stephen Kountourou  Well, it’s happening. After three seasons of outstanding service Olympiakos keeper Jose Sa is on the verge of departing the port for Premier League side Wolverhampton Wanderers. With super agent Jorge Mendes pulling the strings, Rui Patricio will join Italian side Roma and fellow Portuguese player Sa will be his replacement.  Before the move is officially announced however there is still the question as to who Sa's replacement will be going forward. The Greek Champions have been linked with a few shot stoppers over the past couple of weeks with Omonia keeper Fabiano, Borussia Dortmund and Swiss international Roman Burki, Claudio Ramos from Porto, AZ Alkmaar keeper Marco Bizot and Tom Vaclk,    who is currently staring for the Czech Republic at Euro 2020, are all potential candidates.    But what if Thrylos made a very left wing decision in handing the first choice gloves to a player already at the club. Y...

The second round of draws have been made in Europe for the three tiers of European club competitions.   What does that mean for the Greek teams involved? By Alexander Koutakos On June 16th, the draw for the second qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League and the newly formed UEFA Conference League were made. Three Greek teams were involved. Olympiacos in the Champions League draw and Aris Thessaloniki and AEK Athens in the Conference League draw. PAOK is the odd team out of the mix as they will be commencing their European journey in the third qualifying round of the Conference League rather than in the second qualifying round. The draw for that will be occurring in the middle of July. In this blog, I will be taking a look at the future opponents of Olympiacos, AEK Athens and Aris Thessaloniki. Each of these teams will face their opponents in a two-legged tie and the winners will advance to the third qualifying round of the respective competitions.  Olympiacos Olympiacos ...

Play Like That in September? Then the Qatar Dream is Alive Again By Christian Leggas  Let's be honest I think I speak for a lot of Ethniki supporters when I say that confidence levels were low about our prospects of qualifying for the 2022 World Cup after the poor display against Georgia in March earlier this year.  While the June matches weren't competitive games, that does not mean that this team hasn't learned from the mistakes in March. As in these two matches. I saw a team that was more solid defensively and more promising going forward.   The Belgium game started with a similar theme to that Georgia match. A couple of early sites at goal that we didn't take advantage of, then struggled to create much going forward.  As that first half went on, flashes of our match in Granada against Spain began to show, with the Ethniki stuck in their half trying their best to nullify Belgium's star-studded attacking threats. A slightly better Spain-away theme continued for th...

Ionikos. The Long Awaited Return By Stephen Kountourou  In football, there are plenty of feel good stories. Teams overachieving to win an unexpected league title, sides with the budget of a cheese sandwich going to the latter stages of a major European competition, or the long awaited return of a former first tier side from the depths of the footballing pyramid. For me, the story of Ionikos FC is one of those feel good moments from this season just after the plucky side from Piraeus finally returned to the super league after a 14 year hiatus.  This also marks the first time that two Piraeus teams will compete in the first division of Greek football since Ionikos themselves were last relegated. While the Kuanolevkoi may have the most decorated history in Greek football, their full-time previous tenure in Greece's top flight was certainly a memorable one. They are still seen by many neutrals as a welcome return to the first division after years away so for this week I will be ta...

JVS – Make the Change By Greg Gavalas Greece took on the number one seed in the world today, as Belgium looked to prepare for the European Championships which start soon. The Ethniki as we know, had a fair bit riding on this game even though it was a friendly and we have not qualified for the Euro’s which are being held this year after the Covid-19 issues Europe faced in 2020 (and still has issues within 2021). For John Van Ship (JVS) and staff it was a chance to test ourselves against another world class team but also look to improve our team who, despite a respectable draw with Spain in Malaga for the opening game towards World Cup 2022 qualification, threw that all away with a horrible performance at home to Georgia, the Ethniki was lucky to come away with a 1-1 daw as Georgia proved the more threatening team, like the Spain game, our attack was non-existent for most of the game and that’s inexcusable. The match with Belgium is followed by Norway only a few days later, we have seen ...