Euro 2008 Team Profile: Greece

Nickname: The Pirate Ship. (Would I make this up?)

Jersey: White with Blue (Home). Blue with White (Away.)

FIFA World Ranking (as of May 2008): 8 (6th in the tournament)

Fixtures/Schedules: Group D; Spain, Russia, Sweden

Tue June 10th
20:45 Grece vs Sweden (Salzburg)
Sat June 14th
20:45 Greece vs Russia, (Salzburg)
Wed June 18th
20:45 Greece vs Spain,(Salzburg)

Coach: Otto Rehhagel

Rehhagel has been the coach for Greece since 2001. Coaching years are a bit like dog years, so that’s essentially forever. And not only that, he recently extended his contract to 2010. This is what happens when you take a small country’s 150-1 underdog team to a major international championship, as Rehhagel did in Euro 2004.

As Greece coach, he is known for a defensive style and love of big defenders.

The funniest description of Rehhagel that I’ve read shows up in Wikipedia:

Rehhagel is also a deft and ruthless club politician. He is notorious for restructuring clubs so that he wields absolute power, making friends with powerful people and using them to eliminate the opposition. He prefers the system of a benign dictatorship. His way of handling a club – in a competent and innovative, but also highly patronizing and condescending way – has been immortalized as ottocracy, a pun on his name alluding to the style of management/government; autocracy.

(And if you’re not a believer in Wikipedia, feel free to google “Rehhagel ottocracy” to see what else turns up.)

Captain: Angelos Basinas

Expectations: I honestly don’t believe that anybody has any clue how Greece will do in this tournament. On the one hand, they’re the reigning Euro champions. FIFA ranks them eighth in the world. One the other, they were last in their group in the Confederations Cup in 2005, and they didn’t qualify for the World Cup in 2006.

But they easily finished top of their group in Euro qualifying, winning ten out of twelve games. Yet that group consisted of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary,Turkey, Moldova, Malta and Norway. Recognize any names from World Cup ‘06? No? That’s because not a single team qualified. And in two recent pre-Euro friendlies, Greece lost to Hungary and drew with Armenia.

But don’t write them off. Bookmakers in 2004 were giving odds for their win at anywhere from 80:1 to 150: 1. (Don’t you wish you’d bet a hundred dollars on them back then?) Those bookmakers learned their lesson then; current odds are about 33:1. This puts them 11th of the 16 teams, behind the Russians, Swiss and Czechs, but ahead of Turkey, Sweden, Romania, Poland and Austria.

But the Greeks are counting on that X-factor, national pride, and team spirit to carry them through again.

History: As mentioned above, these are the reigning Euro champions. This was their highest achievement ever. They qualified for Euros one other time, in 1980, and didn’t win a single game. Their next major tournament wasn’t till World Cup 1994. Goals against? Ten. Goals for? Zero.

And that was it until they walked away with the the Henri Delaunay trophy in 2004.

Key Player: Greece doesn’t have a lot of international superstars in their ranks — they’re more about team play. But this could be the tournament for striker Theofanis Gekas, who plays his club football at Bayer Leverkusen in the German Bundesliga. He scored five goals in Euro qualifying and is hoping for more in the tournament itself.

Other Key Players: Look to Greece’s defense to make a difference. They tend to be big, strong and good in the air. Among them, Sotiris Kyrgiakos is 6′4″ and scored three times in Euro qualifying. And Trainos Dellas is 6′5″, and was key to Greece’s win in 2004. I know he wouldn’t mind a repeat.

And Angelos Charisteas, who scored the tournament-winning goal in 2004, will be hoping that lightning can strike twice.

X-Factors: Team captain Angelos Basinas suffered an ankle injury in the recent friendly with Hungary, and longtime goalkeeper Antonis Nikopolidis is coming back from a thigh injury. How will this affect the team?

And never write off a team with strong national spirit, especially one where more than half of the squad members play in the same league.

Squad: The squad includes ten players who were on the championship team of 2004.

Goalkeepers: Antonis Nikopolidis (Olympiakos Piraeus), Costas Chalkias (Aris Salonika), Alexandros Tzorvas (OFI Crete)

Defenders: Giourkas Seitaridis (Atletico Madrid), Christos Patsatzoglou (Olympiakos), Nikos Spyropoulos (Panathinaikos), Traianos Dellas (AEK Athens), Loukas Vintra (Panathinaikos), Vassilis Torosidis (Olympiakos), Sotiris Kyrgiakos (Eintracht Frankfurt), Ioannis Goumas (Panathinaikos), Paraskevas Antzas (Olympiakos)

Midfielders: Angelos Basinas (Real Mallorca), Stelios Giannakopoulos (Bolton Wanderers), Georgios Karagounis (Panathinaikos), Costas Katsouranis (Benfica), Alexandros Tziolis (Panathinaikos)

Forwards: Giorgios Samaras (Celtic), Angelos Charisteas (Nuremberg), Dimitris Salpigidis (Panathinaikos), Fanis Gekas (Bayer Leverkusen), Yiannis Amanatidis (Eintracht Frankfurt), Nikos Liberopoulos (AEK)

Team Blogger: Takis has the Greece blog covered.

Random International Moments: I wrote up their Euro 2004 win in a separate post, but this video needs to be shown again. It’s the Euro 2004 tournament from a Greek perspective, and it’s worth watching, if only to hear the shocked joy in the voice of the announcers every time Greece scores a goal.

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