Greek goalkeeping inflation gives Poyet luxury problems

Greek goalkeeping inflation gives Poyet luxury problems

By Andreas Mitsis 

A host of Greek goalkeepers are in very good form this season with two names standing out from the crowd in Odysseas Vlachodimos and Alexandros Paschalakis.  

In addition, there are many other keepers who have attracted attention, which means luxury problems for Gustavo Poyet before the selection of the year's first national team.

Paschalakis, Vlachodimos and Dioudis get ready for a training session with the national team.

 

In a little over two weeks, the national team will play their first match of the year when they face Gibraltar away from home in the EC qualifying premiere. The squad selection is thus approaching for national team captain Gustavo Poyet.  

Before the selection, the 55-year-old is a little worried about the central midfield, where the qualitative solutions are few in number.  However, the opposite applies to the goalkeeper position.

There, the Uruguayan, together with, among others, goalkeeper coach Fanis Katergiannakis instead has a very urgent dilemma. Katergiannakis has recently spoken out in the Greek media about the process and thinking during the squad selections where a trio of goalkeepers are to be selected. There, the third choice goalkeeper at the European Championship in 2004 mentioned that they usually pick out approx five goalkeepers which they then whittle down to three.  

Some of course take themselves out and Poyet always has the last word in the matter. The goalkeeping team is a small team within the team where everyone plays an important role which should not be forgotten.  Katergiannakis also rightly praised all the skilled Greek goalkeeping coaches around the country.

The selection among goalkeepers is at the moment noticeably wide with many in-form cage keepers, although a couple stand out from the crowd.  In our own Super League there are e.g. a handful of Greek goalkeepers who are in fine form and are having strong seasons in their respective club teams.  

Let's take a closer look at the collection Poyet has to choose from.

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The first goalkeeper in the national team is Benfica's Odysseas Vlachodimos. The 28-year-old has been convincing between the posts for the Portuguese big club for several years and this season has also impressed greatly in the Champions League. He has been linked with clubs such as Ajax and Manchester United but has remained in Lisbon.  

Recently he signed a new contract until 2027 with a €60 million buyout clause. It can be argued that Vlachodimos is a top ten goalkeeper in Europe and has been ranked number one in the national team for a couple of years now.

Just as given that Vlachodimos is number one, it is just as obvious that Olympiakos’ Alexandros Paschalakis is second goalkeeper. He signed for Olympiakos at the end of September last year after many fine years in PAOK where he had his breakthrough in 2017-18.  

An injury to Tomas Vaclík then quite immediately opened up for him last autumn. Paschalakis took the chance and replaced the Czech national team goalkeeper in an exemplary manner.  No easy task as Vaclík was outstanding for the big club from Pirareus last season in 2021-22.  The 33-year-old has only gotten better and better over the years, which may bring to mind a certain goalkeeping legend by the name of Antonis Nikopolidis. They both have something in common career-wise. Paschalakis has become significantly safer overall in his interventions, dominates his penalty area, has enormous reach and, above all, evaluates situations better than he did earlier in his career. Can be a clean wall in some matches. Paschalakis is also a lovely character off the field where he helps to spread joy within the playing squad.

Furthermore, we have AEK's Giorgos Athanasiadis, who will likely complete the goalkeeper trio in the upcoming national team squad together with the two recently mentioned.  

Athanasiadis returned to "Enosis" for this season after a very successful loan spell with Sheriff Tiraspol last year. In Moldova, he won the double with the team he also led to historic Champions League play where, among other things, he was the player of the match away to Real Madrid in the group stage when his team took a sensational win.  The 29-year-old has done well for AEK this season where he poked Cican Stankovic and has a much more grateful back line to work with than was the case for him in the 2020-21 season.

Further behind the trio above we have Vasilis Barkas. In recent years, the 28-year-old has often been part of the national team's goalkeeper set-up, but has had more difficulty recently.  

The move to Celtic in the summer of 2020 did not turn out well for several different reasons. This season, Barkas is on loan in Utrecht, where he partially found stability in his performances and confidence again.  

Sokratis Dioudis, like Barkas, has been part of some squads in recent years but has also fallen back in the rankings.  After a really strong 2020-21 season with Panathinaikos, he had to stand aside for Alberto Brignoli last year. For this season, he was also passed by Yuri Lodygin, which meant that the Aris product was the third choice of the greens from the capital last fall.  

As a result of the situation, there was a move to Polish Zaglebie Lubin in January, where Dioudis has recently started playing regularly in the hope of finding his way back to his old good form.  

In OFI we find 21-year-old Christos Mandas.  He broke through last year in Atromitos but moved to Heraklion and Crete a little over a year ago.  OFI has shown faith in him and this season he has been strong as the last outpost in the team. In particular, Mandas has stood out with really good efforts in OFI's meetings with the big clubs.

Panagiotis Tsintotas has had some fantastic winter months behind it.  The 29-year-old signed for PAS Giannena during the World Cup break and has been reborn in the Epirus club.  

After several years in AEK where he never really got the full chance with good surroundings, he has been vindicated in PAS. His entry has helped the team's defense significantly resulting in PAS having a better second half of the regular season than the first.  

Andreas Gianniotis in Atromitos is another goalkeeper with a good season behind him before the Peristeri club's play-out games.  Gianniotis didn't succeed at either Olympiakos or Maccabi Tel Aviv but has always performed well and had a high minimum level of performance when he was at clubs like Atromitos or Panionios.  

Finally, Olympiakos' great goalkeeping promise, Konstantinos Tzolakis, should also be mentioned in this context. The 20-year-old is a big project for Olympiakos where they will try to get as much as they can out of his potential. He has played a total of twenty games for the big club from Piraeus and the big question is when the reflex-fast goalkeeper will get the full chance.  

Paschalakis will find it difficult to pin down the near future for Tzolakis who is captain and first goalkeeper in the U21 national team ahead of the previously mentioned Mandas. It will be interesting to see how Olympiakos deal with him. Possibly a loan could be imminent before next season.

Hellas Football 

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