Greece 5-1 Belarus: A clean slate
Greece 5-1 Belarus: A clean slate By Alec McQuarrie These don’t come around that often. The last clean slate came against Gibraltar in March 2023, the start of a 10-match qualifying campaign that ultimately ended in heartbreak, in failure, in Tbilisi. But it started with a 3-0 win in the Algarve against a team from a rock hanging off the Iberian peninsula. Only three players survive from Greece’s last clean slate: Kostas Tsimikas, Konstantinos Mavropanos and captain Tasos Bakasetas. That alone should demonstrate just how far the Ethniki have come in the last two and a half years. Back then, Christos Tzolis was warming the Norwich bench in the Championship, Christos Zafeiris was Norwegian and Kostas Karetsas was playing for Belgium’s U16s a nd the 17-year-old is making it really, really hard for those of us who are desperately trying not to get ahead of ourselves. His mature, guided finish inside two and a half minutes was a statement: this is not the same Greece as two and a half ye...