The Ethniki needs a cultural shift to a build a winner

The Ethniki needs a cultural shift to a build a winner

By George Sots,

 

Now that the dust has settled from the Euro qualifiers and the playoffs, we’re once again left with nothing but the same repetitive questions… 

Was it the manager? 

Was it the player selections/lineups? Was it the tactics/formations? 

Did we use our best possible XI?

I don’t think it took us the entirety of the Euro 2024 campaign to unfold in order for us to see that the issues that have plagued this team over the previous two coaches continued here with Poyet. 

Before we look at the most recent skew of questionable leadership, the previous two managers’ tenures fell way short of meeting expectations. 

Angelos Anastasiadis’ time with the Ethniki was a shit show that ended with his walking papers, where the two best CB’s in Sokratis and Manolas spoke up over the nonsense they saw behind the scenes. 

Here’s a guy who had players kissing eikones before games. Sokratis asked him about the players watching game tape for upcoming matches to learn the opponents’ tendencies for defending corners. His response? “It’s all in God’s hands”. Not exactly what you want to hear from your coach to prepare for important qualifying games. Needless to say, things deteriorated very quickly from there. 

But, I digress.

We’ll start with Michael Skibbe. He was an interesting choice for manager, though I remember there were questions about his lack of experience, especially on the international stage. But I think there was a lot of excitement, particularly because he’s another German coach (maybe he’ll be able to turn things around the way Otto was able to!). Although he didn’t win at first, you could see that he was trying new things, calling up new players — normal things that a coach should be doing when feeling out his players and the team, etc. We soon beat the Dutch in a friendly, looking effective and dangerous in the process. 

I remember thinking, “OK, here we go! We’ve got some weapons and Skibbe has figured out how and when to use them!”. Boy, was I ever wrong! His tactics, lineups and subs went from peculiar to odd to downright absurd. It was as though he had run out of ideas, so he was just trying to throw anything against the wall hoping it would stick. Stafylidis, a perennial LB being used as a CDM and CM. Zeca being used as a RW. Maniatis being used at RB, a position he hadn’t played in years. I’m sure I’m forgetting others, but you get the idea. 

Despite all of that, he brought us to the brink of qualification for the 2018 World Cup. Only Croatia (the eventual runner up of the tournament) stood in the way. In the first leg, he played an atrocious lineup which saw us get handed a 4-1 loss away, but that one away goal gave us a glimmer of hope for a resurgence for the second leg back home. 

So, you’d think in a must win game, where Greece needs a minimum of three goals, Skibbe would go for it and field an offensive lineup. Wrong! Essentially, Skibbe played not to lose, only making like-for-like substitutions. We tied 0-0 and at no point subbed off a defensive player for an offensive-minded one. Baffling. He would last till the end of the Nations League before being unceremoniously relieved of his duties — and not soon enough.

That brings us to John van’t Schip (JVS). Knowing that we had a lot of young talent just waiting to be called up, I was optimistic in thinking this young-ish coach would be the guy to turn things around. At first, he started injecting the talent and youth in the Ethniki’s player pool, indicating he was very in tune with his job, willing to look everywhere for good soccer players with Greek passports willing to play for the Ethniki and restore our faith in the national team program. 

His first few games in charge were bumpy but you could see what he was trying to do, and it made sense. Except it only took a little while before he started calling up the same players and starting them, regardless if better options were available. Skibbe was also guilty of this at times, but JVS really had an issue with fielding two true wingers at the same time. Instead, it always seemed to be a true winger and CM or CAM playing on one of the wings. And Bakasetas, who needed 29 games before scoring his first goal for Greece (tallying only one assist in those 29 games), somehow overtook Fortounis (and any other option we had) for the number 10 CAM spot in the formation. 

What was truly bizarre about JVS, though, was how he would experiment with something that worked incredibly in a friendly, only to never see it again. He’d just go back to the well with his same guys, including a very clunky and slow midfield that couldn’t create anything against even half decent competition. 

One standout highlight was when he inexplicably decided that Hatzidiakos, a full-time CB was capable of playing RB and put him there for two games. It was immediately obvious that he had little idea on effectively playing as a RB because he doesn’t possess the skill set to be there in the first place. At one point in the game, Fortounis had the ball on the right side of the field, emphatically motioning Hatzdiakos to make an overlapping run for him to help create space, only he stood there like a kolonawithout attempting a move forward. 

JVS irked me further after the game during his press conference when he said, “We don’t have Haztidiakos on the field for that, he’s there for only defense. We have Jah-nnoulis (Giannoulis) on the left side for offense”. It’s bad enough Greece’s manager mispronounced Giannoulis’ name but what’s worse is his mindset for 90 minutes was to essentially handcuff his right winger as well as his left back. 

Giving them no one to interchange with up the field on their respective sides? That was just mind numbing to me. Why he didn’t call up a couple of capable RB’s is just beyond me. 

He had called up a relatively unknown Rota, but chose not to use him, including in the friendly they had prior. Unfortunately for JVS, like Skibbe before him, he couldn’t figure out when and where to use his players, when to go after a game, when to sit back and defend, etc. A must win away game in Sweden is a prime example. 

He fielded an idiotic defensive lineup that wouldn’t be able to counter attack creatively or effectively. Sweden overwhelmed us for 70 minutes and took a 2-0 lead. By the time JVS made his first sub, the game was long out of reach. He was let go two games later when his contract ended. But not before he left with some parting words for EPO and the Greek League, blaming the “big five” clubs (OLY, AEK, PAOK, PAO and ARIS) for the lack of talent in Greece because of training facilities, properly developing players, etc. 

He wasn’t completely wrong in that assessment, but that doesn’t excuse his awful decision making with personnel, tactics and his delayed substitutions. Not to mention that a lot of Greece’s talent plays outside of Greece in more competitive European leagues. At the end, he was even blocking Greek fans on Twitter/X and Instagram who were critical of his coaching. Pretty petty if you ask me. If you’re the coach of a national soccer team and you’re spending more time on social media blocking people that hurt your feelings, then I think you’re in the wrong profession. 

Hopefully the door didn’t hit him on the way out. On a side note, he also didn’t handle the whole situation with Manolas and Sokratis well at all. 

 

And finally, we have Gus Poyet. Fans desperately wanted a competent coach with vision toward new tactics on and off the field. Initially, Poyet came in guns blazing, kicking ass and taking names. Aside from a couple hiccups against Montenegro and Cyprus, the team looked very good. 

Although I did find it odd that Poyet wasn’t experimenting enough with implementing new players in friendlies, he just used the regulars mostly. I mean, that’s fine, but you should be giving reps to guys that could potentially come in and help the team. I don’t think we needed to see Bakasetas, Kourbelis, Bouchalakis and Mantalos playing full tilt in friendlies. 

The fact that players like Kotsiras and Saliakas have been called up and get next to no minutes in friendlies is very strange. Like, why call up players if you’re not going to use them? 

Anyways, we won our Nations League group quite handily, giving us a fallback plan for Euro qualification if we failed in our qualifying group. Unfortunately for us, Poyet’s team and tactics were just a paper tiger and he never seemed to realize that playing a slow, unimaginative midfield of Kourbelis, Bakasetas, Siopis and Bouchalakis will only get you results against lower level teams, but will get utterly stomped against better nations in Europe, and the world for that matter. 

It seemed that regardless of who we played, Poyet would play his same regulars, no matter what. Players like Tzavellas continued to be called to duty instead of younger more capable players. 

The Ethniki took on a feel of some sort of club team that guaranteed its players a spot regardless of their form or playing time at their actual club. Poyet’s tactics in the two games against the Netherlands and the away game in France were laughable at best and downright rubbish at worst. We had absolutely zero skill or creativity in our midfield in those three games. 

Poyet assumed that Tsimikas was just magically going to make runs by himself up and down the left side and smoke a cross in for Giakoumakis because it worked against Ireland, so naturally it’ll work against France and the Dutch… (face-palm). 

I don’t count the last game against France because it was a nothing game for them. People will say that we held them to 1-0 in France and that we defended well. We did not defend well, France wiped the floor with us all game and should’ve easily won 5-0 or 6-0 had it not been for Vlachodimos’ heroics in net that game. But when we walked into Holland we got our lunch served to us very quickly. 

Throughout Poyet’s time with the Ethniki, we never seemed to comprehend that our midfield was doing a piss poor job of moving the ball around and being that link for the CF’s and wingers. I’ve seen better ball movement from the midfielders of Greek Superleague and MLS teams. 

So, qualification failed — but, we still had the playoff round. To no one’s surprise, Poyet started all his favourites regardless of the fact that some of them were in piss poor form and/or not 100% match fit due to injury. Despite all that, we came out with a good first half… or did we? 

I had to ask after that first half, “Were we THAT good? Or was Kazakhstan THAT shit?” I think it’s the latter. Although we won the game 5-0, I felt the gameplay, lineup and tactics were a complete façade. The Kazakhs were utterly defensively clueless in that game. I thought we made some nice plays, but otherwise felt like it was more about our opponent playing atrociously bad than it was about us executing a masterful tactical game plan. 

I don’t think I was wrong, considering we played the exact same lineup five days later v Georgia and we didn’t register a shot on target for the first 90 minutes! Against Georgia?! 

Really?! Nonsensical, but it happened. Anyway, I don’t think I need to say much more about this one as we’re probably all still simmering about how it ended. 

You know it’s bad when Katsouranis is on a podcast criticizing how bad our tactics were. 

Asking questions like, why our mids don’t make runs or why none of our players try to take on defenders, or why we didn’t play two strikers v Georgia as they were using three huge CB’s all game? 

All good questions, I have to say.

So, once again we miss a finals tournament, and once again, it’s because of an inept coach incapable of making logical lineup and tactical changes when needed. 

I don’t know if everyone remembers this, but when we played the Dutch in Greece, he subbed off our CAM’s for CDM’s and subbed on ALL of our CF’’s. Who was going to get them the ball? We have three very good strikers that all score regularly for their club teams, except the difference there is they get service and are able to get on to the balls and bury them. 

But somehow Poyet couldn’t seem to connect those simple dots throughout his time that a U15 coach would undoubtedly be able to do.

It’s also unclear to me why a player like Bakasetas has basically been given the keys to the city. Does he work hard? Yes. Does he care about this team? Yes. Is he talented? No. 

He isn't fast, has no dribbling ability, little vision on the field to make plays to open up a team’s defense. He can't hit a player with a long ball pass and barely sends players in properly with a nice through ball. He possesses a cannon of a shot, yet has no accuracy on it whatsoever. 

Furthermore, he constantly gets his shot blocked because he hasn't figured out how to fake a shot at the age of 30. As I mentioned earlier, it took him 29 games to score a goal, with only one assist to go with it. I'll leave you with this — what manager in his right mind would continue to field an offensive player that offers next to nothing on offense? 

Yet somehow Bakasetas not only continued playing, he was given the captain’s armband.

We possess so much talent. There are so many players that should be starting for Greece on the regular or should be given opportunities to show what they have. Bring back Fortounis — it’s ridiculous he wasn’t being called up prior to retiring. 

It’s also time to inject the youth, like Tzolis, Konstantelias and Vagiannidis. We also have three strikers, two of which are complete goal scoring machines right now. 

You’re telling me this coach couldn’t figure out tactics to start two of them at the same time?!

This isn’t a club team where you can buy and sell players and bring in guys that fit your tactics, this is a national team where you have to use who you have available in the pool of players with Greek citizenships or passports. 

We need a coach that’s going to come in and properly evaluate the players at his disposal, that’s going to watch their game tape and highlights, so he can truly understand who they are. 

A coach that’s going to see how club level teams utilize his players and understand why they’re successful there. These should all be no-brainers, but for some reason they haven’t been with the Ethniki. That needs to change now! 

I’ve long pondered about whatever politics might be going on behind the scenes for this nonsense to have gone on as long as it has, but I don’t care anymore.

I have one message for EPO: stop all the bullshit and the nonsense right now, pony up the cash and pay a real coach. 

Let that coach do what he needs to do and call up who he wants. 

No more Tzavellas’ Zeca’s and Bouchalakis’. Thank you for your service, don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Hellas Football 

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