Olympiacos Piraeus

[Festivus]

 Welcome.

Do you think Olympiakos might win a European trophy in the near future?

What do you think was the key to Greece's success in Euro 2004? Did any of you ever expect Greece to win the Euro?

[Jotenko]

What do you think was the key to Greece's success in Euro 2004? Did any of you ever expect Greece to win the Euro?

FFS change the subject.

:-P

[Faliro]

Welcome.

Do you think Olympiakos might win a European trophy in the near future?

What do you think was the key to Greece's success in Euro 2004? Did any of you ever expect Greece to win the Euro?

I am not so confident we will win any European trophies in the future. I hope we do. I think if our league recovers and the giants (AEK, PAO and PAOK) rebuild well - I think that increases the chance as we will be more battle-hardened in Europe.

Greece won Euro 2004 for a few reasons. Mourinho was correct to say the team was playing for the fans that tournament but there were other reasons too. For me the key reasons were:

1/ Superior defense. Greece has a history of producing excellent defenders for some reason.

2/ Otto Rehaggel.  For years Greece underachieved with far more talented players than the Euro 2004 squad simply because of their egos and laziness. When Otto became coach he got rid of anyone with a ego. He told the players where they would play and asked if there were any problems. Zikos (very talented player) complained and he was never seen again in our team, the same with the former Golden Boot winner Machlas. However the players who remained were slaves to Otto and he could make them do exactly what he wanted. For the first time there was discipline in the Greek NT and that was enough to win the tournament.

3/ Everyone thought they didn't have to alter their tactics to beat us. If I was a team playing against Greece in 2004, I would have flooded the attacking half like the Germans did against Greece in Euro 2012. Most the teams in Euro 2004 thought they had enough talent to beat Greece without changing the way they play.

To answer your final question, the only Greek I knew who said we had any chance of winning Euro 2004 was actually my mother.. she even put money on it - but the man at the betting shop tricked her and made her include scores when all she wanted was to place bets on us winning the tournament. Every other Greek including the press were just hoping we would win a game and have fun.

I think the final advantage is that other teams and media underrate Greece and it players. For example - some Benfica fans on here have already stated Benfica has better players than Olympiacos. If you look at the values of the two teams, Benfica's team is worth 3 times as much! I am not convinced that is completely true as far as actual talent goes. When a player signs for Benfica, he is signing for a very respected club and his value and fame can easily increase if he does well. When a player signs for a Greek team, his value usually decreases regardless as most people don't rate Greece and its league. The problem is there are some very talented players in Greece and if they held say a Spanish/ Serbian/Italian passport instead of a Greek one - their value would automatically increase as media and scouts are more attracted to those nations when buying players. Greece never managed to shake its lazy player label even after 2004. Bizarrely the most lazy Greek player I ever saw, who is bizarrely still playing is Katsouranis.

There are some very talented players in our team are Weiss, Manolas, Mitroglou and even Samaris. Manolas in particular impresses me. At Olympiacos when we buy players or develop them, we do that on actual ability, not perceived ability or fame - because perceived ability and fame is great to sell newspapers, but those players are usually very expensive.

[Faliro]

Can I ask what are your opinions about Fernando Santos. Personally I dont like the way he designs a team and I think he is quite corrupt.

[JUST4FUN]

Can I ask what are your opinions about Fernando Santos. Personally I dont like the way he designs a team and I think he is quite corrupt.

Fernando Santos is just a noob guy lol

[Vitor84]

γεια σας

I'm living in Greece for some months, but unfortunately the city where I am living (Serres) is far from Athens, and I don't have possibility to watch the game live in the stadium

Speaking about Fernando Santos, I like him like person. I don't know any reason to think that he is corrupt (although he has good relationships with the most corrupt man of Portugal: Pinto da Costa). But maybe here in Greece have something more that make you think like it.
Like coach, he is not very good, his teams generally pratice a nice game, but not effective and I think he is very bad in the relationship with players to make them confidence grow up or just withstand the pressure of the results. For example, when he was in sporting and Benfica happened that in the most critical part of championship the team could not take the pressure and started to lose the most important games (I think also in PAOK happened the same). And for a national team I think is more important a coach able to work with players in a psicological aspects than tactics or physical.

[iSLBenfica]

Faliro, what u know about Benfica?

[Faliro]

I know very little about Benfica ^^

@Vitor

I find Fernando Santos lies a lot. He states that he plays players who are getting minutes with their teams, but yet he always fields his favorite players..Katsouranis and Karagounis..and both are antiques, he also fields Tziolis non stop. These players are all friends and their agents are always on the phone to the EPO making sure they get selected.

I am not sure, but I feel Santos is an extremely corrupt man and I find his player selections and tactics poor as well as his motivational techniques which are non existant.

[josantiago]

Fernando Santos has a reputation here to be a "Loser", where he can make his team play well, but at the end of the competitions, the team lacks in surpass the pressure existed in that stage of the competition they're inserted and loose the competitions they are involved.

I'm not sure if he's corrupted, but he lacks of "backbone" and maybe be a bit influenced to use determined players.

It's funny you say about Karagounis and Katsouranis, since they are players that Fernando Santos coached in his year and 4 month stint here 

[Festivus]

 @Faliro

Indeed Greece had a lot of team spirit and unity in Euro 2004. Aesthetically speaking, Greece's football didn't appeal most people(kinda like Italian football) but it was effective.

As for the upcoming game between our teams, I'd rather not risk a prediction since your stadium is very hard to play at due to its atmosphere. Not to mention last time we played you guys it didn't go well :x

As for Fernando Santos, he seems like a nice person but that does not make him a good coach, I'm afraid. He's too soft and lacks leadership qualities. He has managed the 3 top Portuguese sides in the past with low success. His teams tend to be strong at home, though. No idea about corrupt, but I do find that he overrates himself and tends to blame the players when things go wrong. He should have just kept to engineering instead of football :p

[Red.Fever]

about Fernando Santos
he seems to be a nice and polite guy.
personally don't think he is corrupt.
maybe just a bit influenceabel

has a coach
I think he's an OK coach, not great, not bad
when he was our manager we played some nice football, but the biggest problem IMO is that we normally would only play well 45mins of the match
we normally gave the 1st half to our opponents since we seemed to enter the match half asleep lol, which some times resulted in losing points and were making our fans quite annoyed
and like others have said, he doesn't seem to prepare the team well mentally, which is a problem our current coach also has 


about our match
in normal circumstances this would already be a hard match. Olympiacos is a good side, and a hard team to beat at home
but at this point in time with our performance, it will be even harder, and I'd say most our fans don't have high hopes for it :/

[Faliro]

@ Festivus Well since Euro 2004 we play a lot more ugly if you can believe it. I mean we still have katsouranis in the midfield and he cant pass properly and is slow...we rely on set pieces..

As for the game tomorrow.. I think you are right, the atmosphere in the karaiskaki will be very strong. Flares are banned for Uefa competition, but it will still be immense and a lot of drama. It is games like these that make the CL fun. I still think the game will be tight though, I will be surprised if we see another 5-1. I think your team will try very hard.

As for Fernando Santos - he has managed to make Greece one of the most boring teams to watch. The media seem to like him in Greece and I have no idea why - probably because we win a high percentage of our games..

@red fever
I think anything can happen tomorrow. At the end of the day, Benfica is still a big club and whether you playing bad or not, it is going to be a very hard fought game for both teams. You have many quality individuals and it just needs a few of them to link together and we can see a very tough match.

As for F. Santos - you are right, every time Greece play, we seem shit for the first 45. Second half the players play like crazy so they can keep their starting spot..

[Festivus]

 Btw, you've told us already what you thought of Katso and Karagounis, but what about Fyssas and Machairidis(sp?), the other 2 Greek players who have played for Benfica in the past?

[Faliro]

Fyssas I think retired soon afterwards - in his prime I think he was quite good, nothing spectacular, but did his job. He is now the assistant coach/ technical director to Fernando Santos for the Greek NT.

Every Greek Santos trusts seems to have a Benfica connection!

I am not aware of the other player you mention. I remember Seitaridis who was a very good right back but extremely lazy was good friends with Maniche.

[Festivus]

 Interesting since Santos never got to manage Fyssas in Benfica.

As for Machairidis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triantafyllos_Machairidis

Yeah he didn't do well at all here...