Greece 1-1 Georgia: It’s all about perspective

September 4th, 2010 | by: Chris Paraskevas | Comments Off

Perspective is a magical thing and in football in particular, it can change the mood of a fan at a whim, taking them from utter despair and near-suicide to contentment with life and zen-level peace with the world.

Take Greece’s 1-1 draw at home to Georgia in their opening Euro 2012 Qualifier. On the surface, a disappointing and potentially disastrous result in the long-run considering Croatia kicked off their campaign on the same night with a 3-0 win in Latvia. With a trip to face Slaven Bilic’s side away from home in midweek this was hardly the start required and immediately puts new manager Fernando Santos on the back-foot.

Cue the usual post-match state of melancholy that usually lasts for about 48 hours.

Then there’s the other angle. Now this helps tremendously when it comes to dealing with the frustration of seeing Kostas Katsouranis again start and Michalis Sifakis taking it upon himself to play the ’sweeper keeper’ role that I thought I would only ever see in Football Manager given the bad name Rene Higuita gave to it all those years ago.

Consider that football powerhouse France was defeated at home by Belarus, that four-time world champion Italy had to come from a goal behind and was rather fortunate to beat Estonia, that a perennially talented Romania were held at home by Albania and that Portugal failed to beat Cyprus despite scoring four times and Greece’s latest slip-up is a little easier to take in. After all, we’re hardly a superpower despite pushing the top ten regularly in FIFA’s world rankings and making a name now for consistently qualifying for major tournaments.

Let’s face it: Greece’s golden generation of ‘04 has well and truly past, the current crop simply a competitive and professional unit sprinkled with two or three stand-out talents.

The string of surprising results on the opening night of Euro qualifying is a sign of the times, reflective of a growing professionalism amongst former minnows who are suddenly providing genuine opposition for established powers. Greece should by no means be considered an exception to the rule that the bigger teams are going to start slipping up more noticeably and more regularly.

Feel better? That’s what I mean about perspective…

Now in terms of sober analysis of the here and now regarding just the Greek team, it’s not quite as promising. One point isn’t quite a disaster, especially seeing as how we conceded only a few minutes into the match and by virtue of a defensive and goalkeeping blunder but it really elevates the need for a positive result and performance away against an impressive Croatia. There’s no way Santos’ side will be able to match their opponents for individual quality in the way of technique or talent but organization was shown to be an effective weapon in a similar situation away against Ukraine recently.

There was a rally after going 1-0 down but it took quite some time to break down a Georgian side that employed unspectacular defensive methods (consistent mainly of packing the penalty area with four or five aerially dominant defenders at a time) and gradually sat deeper and deeper. With Theofanis Gekas lacking service and sharpness, one wonders where the steady stream of goals that will be needed to emerge from this group will come from.

Konstantinos Mitroglou showed promise after being introduced off the bench and might just have earned himself a start in midweek, while Avraam Papadopoulos and Sokratis Papastathopoulos eventually overcame their early match nerves to produce strong performances, the latter in particular showing flashes of class that show why AC Milan swooped for him during the off-season.

Midfield remains a real problem area with Giorgios Karagounis on his last legs and Katsouranis… well… still Katsouranis.

You get the feeling that Santos’ Greece is still very much a work in progress with a recent friendly away against Serbia the only chance he’s had to work with a squad that has largely gone unchanged in terms of style and system for quite some time now. The problem of course is that time is something this team don’t have in a group that could be decided rather quickly…