The Greek National Football Team first qualified for the World Cup in 1990. In that debut tournament, they were unable to move past the first round and were eliminated.
The Greeks have not participated in another Word Cup since that first tournament, or at last, that was until this year’s 2010 FIFA World Cup Tournament in South Africa.
In 2010 Football World cup football, the Greek squad has already suffered one loss, a 2-0 opening round fall to South Korea. After the game, the Greek National Team’s coach, Otto Rehhagel, protested that his team is determined to turn things around.
A win over Nigeria would be the first step in that monumental change of direction, and perhaps their only hope of moving up from Group B. Of course, it was Rehhagel that led the Greek Squad to glory in the European Championships six years ago.
If he’s convinced he can turn it around, perhaps he can. The Greek’s coach freely admits his squad lacks players with superstar status but thinks the squad functions well as a unit and, if weather conditions improve, as predicted, believes they can play a better defensive game and be a bit more aggressive with their offense, too.
It’s going to take both to make it happen. He was quoted as saying “we just need to play better football.” From what we’ve seen so far, he could not have summed it up more accurately.
Greece football team is the one that made the people open the book of Football history again after they beat Portugal in the finals of Euro cup 2004 in their own home. The team that was outranked before the tournament came into the flash suddenly with their disciplinary performance in the tournament.
The big names like Czech Republic, France, and eventually Portugal faltered to identify the strength of the team and they all succumbed to these minnows of the tournament. The confidence of the 2004 Euro cup helped them to gain their place in the 2006 Germany world cup but they exited the tournament in the early stages. During their journey, expert German Otto Rehhagel guided the side.
The Greece football team could not stand the expectations of the fans in the 2008 Euro cup as they faltered in the group stage and went back home. Their journey of the 2010 qualifying round was pretty swift as they were easily able to beat other teams and booked their berth in the earlier stages of the qualifying round and ended up as the second top in the team table after the Swiss team.
All the Greek eyes are on Otto Rehhagel for his guidance to the team in the world cup and team’s hop is lying on the KYRGIAKOS and GEKAS and a lonely goal scorer in the Euro Cup 2008 finals, Angelos CHARISTEAS.
Still, you can’t count the Greek National Team out entirely. They have enjoyed some international success with Rehhagel at the helm, despite his age. After all, at 71, he is the oldest coach at the tournament. Still, with age and experience comes wisdom. We’ll have to see if he and his solid team are wise enough to move up to the next round.
Update: Greece was unable to deliver any memorable performance in 2010 and 2014 world cup football.
