Greece

When I committed to writing a blog on every time in the build up to the world cup I expected to have a few Blogs i wasn’t looking forward too. Greece, Iran, Honduras (that’s why i did it first), Costa Rica and Algeria. I’ve done Costa Rica and Honduras and actually enjoyed them. Greece less so. Ive not enjoyed the research but here goes.

Greece in 2004 rocked the world with the win in Portugal. They won without playing well. it was a fluke and wont be repeated in Brazil. They have to go down (in my eyes) as the worst team to win a major competition. 2 years ago I wrote that I would be shocked if Greece got out of their group and they did I looked foolish. They were comfortably beaten in the 2^nd round but they got out of the group. This time around id be shocked if they got out the group again.

Do they have bad players? Not really. Do they have Great players? No not one. They are an organised team and they play well together but they are not a good group of players. There is an argument that they have left their best player at home in Kyriakos Papdopoulos of Schalke 04 in Germany. They reason for this is he is injury prone but he only has to be fit for 1 month. Even Abu Diaby could manage that (actually he couldn’t).

They do have some decent players. Sakratis Papstathopoulos (yeah i copied the spelling over from google) is  good defender who plays for Dortmund. Miroglou had a brilliant record for Olympiacos before moving to Fulham where he never played. Sotiris Ninis had a spell in England before going back to Greece but I rate his as a decent winger. I don’t rate Samaras of Celtic. I think Karagounis is passed his best. That’s about it. I don’t have anything else to say about Greece and that is their problem. Ive written and researched a lot of teams I didn’t think were going to do anything this World Cup ie Honduras and Costa Rica but they both had a star player and Greece has a squad of average players. 1 playing club football for a team that is considered a top team and that’s Sakratis of Dortmund again. They bored me in the last tournament and I expect the same this time.

Group c is made up of Japan, Ivory Coast and Columbia. All 3 are better than Greece. I expect them to lose all 3. I kind of want them to lose all 3 so that they don’t qualify. 3 games of boredom is enough for me. they may Draw to Japan but i think Columbia and Ivory Coast will have to much for them.

Star player: um................... maybe k........ no.............um im going to go for Sokratis Papastathopoulos

One to Watch: um Kastas Mitroglou...... he cant be that bad can he?

Prediction: 1 point maybe. Defiantly out in group stage.