New Greek national team coach Michael Skibbe could be forgiven for wishing Greece could play its home games in Melbourne, for although Tuesday night’s crowd at Etihad was just over 33,000, it still significantly outnumbered the 5,000 or so that attended Greece’s last two home games against Montenegro and Iceland at Karaiskaki stadium in March.

Granted, Montenegro and Iceland are hardly major football drawcards, but still the coach could not help but notice the extent of support for his team throughout the 2-1 win. As soon as the match kicked off, countless blue and white flags suddenly appeared among the spectators at the ‘Greek’ eastern end of the stadium.

As well as the crowd, another thing that pleased the coach was his team’s performance in the Etihad match. The win was just the national team’s second in six games since he took charge in late October 2015 with the brief to qualify for the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia.
At his post-match press conference in Melbourne, Skibbe said he was pleased with what he saw of the squad over the two matches against the Socceroos, praising in particular the team’s spirit and ability to fight for one another.

His comments suggest that qualification for the World Cup won’t be easy and that the team will need to show great resolve and strength of character, a rock-solid defence and an effective counter-attacking game.

“From fighting in the first match until the last second, and also now the second match, we stood as a team together on the pitch. This is one of the things we have to do, even for the qualification matches for the World Cup, to show that we’re defending altogether, that we’re able to create some chances in offensive, if we are playing as fast as possible in forward positions. So I think for us it was a good match with a good result and in a few months I think we will have a good team for the World Cup qualifiers.
“We had a lot of bad matches in the last two years and we have to create something new, and everyone in the team is willing to show this − that we have a new mentality in our team and that we are looking forward and that we will show in Europe that we are better than we have been in the last two years. Everybody is going to do their best.
“Together with the players who are missing on this tour [such as Mitroglou and Fortounis], we will have a team at the beginning of September when we start the qualifiers which is able to win and hopefully go through to the World Cup.”

Back in Melbourne come September, the many Greek Australian fans will be cheering for both the Socceroos and the Ethniki as they embark on their respective qualifying campaigns. They couldn’t agree more with coach Skibbe’s sentiments when he said after Tuesday’s match: “I hope we meet again in Russia.”