EURO 2012 Focus - Greece
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As the EURO 2012 approaches, Extratime.ie will take an indepth look into each participating team. John McCormack looks at the EURO 2012 Group A side Greece.
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Where they are staying, where they are playing
Three interesting facts about the team
So, a recession stricken country in the throes of an austerity programme looks to its football team to stick its finger in the dam of debt that threatens to overcome them.
Sound familiar?
Well multiply that by, oh, a couple of hundred billion and you will have some idea of the task facing the Greek national squad as they return to the scene of their greatest triumph.
On May 17th the Greek coach Fernando Santos named a 25-man provisional panel for the competition that will see a further two players cut following a training camp in Austria. The final squad of 23 will then travel to Poland where they will open their campaign in a match against the hosts on June 8th.
The Portuguese was handed the unenviable task of taking over from Otto Rehagel, who had won the European Championship in 2004, and has picked an experienced squad that will ape his predecessor’s pragmatic approach in the hope of repeating an unlikely repeat.
Although the system will depend heavily on the experience of players such as Giorgos Karagounis, a veteran of the Euro 2004 triumph, along with Celtic’s Giorgos Samaras they do also possess an exciting attacking talent in the guise of their 23 year-old Panathianiakos winger, Sotiris Ninis.
Notable absentees from the squad were Panathinaikos goalkeeper Orestis Karnezis, along with Nikos Spiropoulos and right-back Loukas Vintra, while PAOK striker Stefanos Athanasiadis also missed out.
Final 23 man squad:
Goalkeepers: Kostas Chalkias (PAOK FC), Michalis Sifakis (Aris Thessaloniki FC), Alexandros Tzorvas (US Città di Palermo).
Defenders: Vassilis Torossidis (Olympiacos FC), Kyriakos Papadopoulos (FC Schalke 04), Sokratis Papastathopoulos (SV Werder Bremen), Avraam Papadopoulos (Olympiacos FC), José Holebas (Olympiacos FC), Giorgos Tzavellas (AS Monaco FC), Stelios Malezas (PAOK FC).
Midfielders: Kostas Katsouranis (Panathinaikos FC), Giorgos Karagounis (Panathinaikos FC), Giannis Maniatis (Olympiacos FC), Giorgos Fotakis (PAOK FC), Grigoris Makos (AEK Athens FC), Giannis Fetfatzidis (Olympiacos FC), Sotiris Ninis (Panathinaikos FC), Kostas Fortounis (1. FC Kaiserslautern).
Forwards: Dimitris Salpingidis (PAOK FC), Giorgos Samaras (Celtic FC), Fanis Gekas (Samsunspor), Nikos Liberopoulos (AEK Athens FC), Kostas Mitroglou (Atromitos FC).
Like their group in the competition proper Greece were drawn in what looked, on paper at least, one of the easiest qualifying groups.
The stand-out team from group F were Ireland’s opening opponents, Croatia, but Slaven Bilic’s men have dipped below their usual high standards of late and were not the force they were in previous years.
Nonetheless the Greeks done well to take four points off their Balkan rivals and the two-nil victory at home in the penultimate group game, with qualification still in the balance, were pivotal to them achieving their ultimate goal.
If all this sounds slightly negative then it must be remembered that Fernando Santos guided his men through the group unbeaten, a great achievement for any team. It should also be noted that they scored fourteen goals while conceding only five, a stat that demonstrates how the new coach has continued to focus on giving little away as the benchmark to success.
This form was not evident in their first match when they drew one-each with Georgia at home although they did follow that with a confidence boosting draw away to Croatia. There then followed a run of five wins on the spin, largely inspired by their attacking mid-fielder Sotoris Ninis, that garnered the bulk of the points that saw them top the group.
Then came a draw with Latvia which was followed up by wins over Croatia and Georgia that earned them qualification to the European Championship finals where they will compete in Group A, consisting of the Czech Republic, Russia and Poland.
If you haven’t already gathered by now then the key player will be the Albanian born midfielder, Sotoris Ninis.
The Panathinaikos playmaker was used sparingly by Otto Rehagel in the 2010 World Cup with rumours circulating that Rehagel felt the player, who was scouted by a host of Eurpoean heavyweights including Manchester United, did not fulfil the defensive duties that had brought the Greeks so much success in the past.
The new coach promoted him to the side after the uninspiring draw against Georgia in the opening game of the qualifying group and the results were instantaneous as Ninis was instrumental in the team winning their next five games.
Unfortunately the gifted attacker injured his cruciate ligament moments after scoring a spectacular goal against Israel and missed the final games in which the side secured qualification.
Whether he can rediscover the form that made him so integral to the team’s plans remains to be seen, but in a team hardly blessed with attacking talent it would be a massive boost if the Parma bound player could add some guile to the Greek’s abundant bluster.
Where they are playing, where they are staying
The Greek players will stay at the 4-star Warszawianka Hotel which is 40km from the city centre and train at the Municipal Stadium in Legionowo, 16km from their hotel.
They will open the tournament against the hosts, Poland, on June 8th and then journey 300km south-east to face the Czech Republic in the Municipal Stadium, Wroclaw, four days later before returning to the capital to play Russia in the final game of the group stages.
Three interesting facts about the team
- When Greece journeyed to the World Cup in 1994 they were defeated 4-0 by both Argentina and Bulgaria. In their final group game they lost 2-0 to Nigeria meaning they were eliminated in the first round by losing all three games, scoring no goals and conceding 10, thus making one of the worst records in World Cup history. Before their triumph at Euro 2004, Greece's record at major tournaments was P6 W0 D1 L5 F1 A14.
- Wonderkid Sotiris Ninis spent the first six half of the 2006/7 season as a Panathinaikos ball boy and the rest in the first team.
- Greece's national side is nicknamed The Pirate Ship - a reference to a craft used in the opening ceremony of Euro 2004 to represent Portugal's history of exploration. Commentator Georgios Helakis suggested that his side should "become pirates and steal the victory", which they did against the hosts in the final.
7/10/11 Greece 2 -0 Croatia EQ
11/10/11 Georgia 1- 2 Greece EQ
11/11/11 Greece 1-1 Russia FR
15/11/11 Greece 1-3 Romania FR
29/02/12 Greece 1-1 Belgium FR
