Another Shattered Dream

Another Shattered Dream

By Greg Gavalas

Only three games into the Project Qatar dream and Greek National Team fans have been left absolutely shattered as Greece fail to win again, this time a must win game against Kosovo in Pristina, in a match the needed only the 3 points for any hope to qualify for the FIFA World Cup of 2022.

John Van Ship and his team are now walking on eggs shells, after a bright start on the bench of the Ethniki we have slowly seen the team regress, most important games are resulting in draws and that simply won’t get you the goals you’re after like qualification for a major tournament.

What is most shattering is the way this has come about, firstly we have gone from creating many chances and having an issue with finishing (this teams forever handicap) to hardly creating any chances but secondly we are failing against modest opposition, like Slovenia in the recent National League campaign and now we have failed to beat Georgia at home and Kosovo for the second time (home and away).

Added to the shattering of dreams, in both matches with Georgia and Kosovo for WC Qualification, we have played very very lousy football, at Toumba against Georgia we were lucky to even get a goal, thanks to an own goal, and we then conceded right after that, we dropped that game in one of the worst home performances to date.

Before this match we had scrambled a 1-1 draw away to Spain, scrambled is the best way to describe it as we didn’t create anything in an attacking sense also, a fortunate penalty got us the draw, my worry about our attacking capabilities all but confirmed in the Georgia disaster.

Since then, we played an ok game with Belgium (1-1) and played a wonderful first half against Norway, a dynamic combination, Giannis Masouras and Dimitris Pelkas had us up 2-0 before a poor second half saw us concede and then have to hang on for death like we always do to hold onto the win but this for me again shows our poor mentality.

We seem to be doing this every game, any game we lead it ends up in a heart attack situation to hold onto win or concede a draw because we lack the mental toughness to be more direct and try put a game out of reach, like we saw against Kosovo today.

Whilst our football was very poor, we lead 1-0 for most of the game and in the second half any chance we had to make it 2-0 was met with a wayward pass, unrealistic lob, tragic attempt at goal or a very poor cross.

On top of that and even with a marginal 1-0 lead, what did we keep doing? Giving possession to Kosovo, even when we had the opportunity to dictate possession we would give it back to them, all this combined not only hurt our chances to win the game, it gave Kosovo more confidence and they took complete advantage of this.

We have wanted to see 2 strikers of late simply due to the amount of chances we miss but the problem is we play with such fat midfielders in Tassos Bakasetas and Andreas Bouchalakis, add to the mix or should I say, take away from the mix, and identified wingers and the only help we are relying on in overlapping runs from Kostas Tsimikas and nothing from the right, and this is how we were playing so well previously folks, you need good wingers and dynamic midfielders to create issues to the opposition, thus in JVS’ early peek, Dimitris Limnios was lighting up on the right wing, you had Masouras eventually get on the left, or Giannoulis add danger there too.

In the Norway match we had Pelkas and Masouras combining with Petros Mantalos and Kostas Galanopoulos, quicker combinations this allowed Tsimikas to go forward effectively like we saw from Thanasis Androutsos on the right and we spread the whole width of the field like this.

In the current campaign during our official games, we have not seen these combinations, we have seen dull midfield set ups, only Emmanuel Siopis is giving his all, with no real wide runs from both sides and this has hurt us dearly, combined with poor passing to flat players or constant miss understandings its not hard to see why we are not winning games we need to be.

The pressing has been good, and it helps get the Greek team in good positions but again, we have seen this in friendlies to turn games back to our advantage not when it matters in the qualifiers.

Unless JVS and his team start looking at the younger talent coming through and build on the good players of today there is no point continuing this juggernaut and failing when it matters to medium opposition.

My final note, what was the point of the Switzerland friendly where we played Leonardo Koutris at LW and Mario Vrousai on the RW and our static midfield combo (Bakasetas-Bouchalakis-Zeca) when in the game that mattered against Kosovo we played a very different formation with two strikers and no real wingers.

Why not call up a replacement for Pelkas, why not utilise Tasos Chatzigiovanis or Dimitris Limnios, why not see what Sotiris Alexandropoulos or Giannis Papanikolaou can offer if you are calling them up, our midfield needs a change, try it, give some new blood a go, now of course I know Limnios is not in great form but he would have offered something on the right, it’s better than nothing and watching the snail paced Bouchalakis and Bakasetas try get possession for us.

Let’s see what the Sweden game has installed for us and if any new blood is used or at the very least, better tactics, on thing is for sure, this team needs to grow a pair.

Hellas Football 

Follow @GregGavalas