It is a time of turmoil and internal strife for the Greek national football team. The two heavy losses in a row to Italy (0-3) and Armenia (2-3) are hard to take, especially considering they were both on home ground and without much resistance by the white-and-blue.
Immediately after the game with the Armenians, Greek captain Sokratis Papastathopoulos spoke to the media and pointed out that he is willing to accept the blame for the result and the bad image of the team, further adding that it is pointless to talk about progression to the final round of Euro 2020 with the way the team is performing, directing his arrows towards head coach Aggelos Anastasiadis.
“Today’s result is due to a series of mistakes that have been happening for a while now. I take full responsibility for all the players, I’m the one responsible. What else can I say? There’s no more looking forward. I won’t go into coaching matters. It’s not my position to talk about that.
“The players make horrible mistakes that are difficult to explain, even for us. These are playground level goals that we conceded today. All the players share a great responsibility which falls mostly on the eldest of us and most of all myself. I accept all of it. That’s all I can say right now.
“There’s a lot of pressure, or maybe there isn’t the right amount of pressure that players should have. I can’t explain it, it’s difficult. I’m tired of appearing in front of the camera and saying the same things. Regarding the players, I take full responsibility. There are some of them that are still young and don’t have the experience.
“Perhaps we don’t have the level necessary for these players to be in the national team, with me first out of all. This isn’t the time to say anything else. We have no luck, we didn’t deserve to go to the finals anyway. At the last qualifiers (Russia 2018) there was a solid effort. We lost to a better team (Croatia). At least we fought. In these last two games we lost hands-down.
“When you play Armenia and you deserve to concede another two goals, you don’t deserve to be at the Euro. I have nothing to say to the media. I’m responsible for everything. There will be changes and there need to be for everyone’s benefit. I don’t want to expand further on this since I’m not the one in charge. If Papastathopoulos needs to stay out for the team to play better, then he will stay out,” concluded the 29-year-old.
ANASTASIADIS: ‘MR PAPASTATHOPOULOS CAN NO LONGER BE HERE’
In response to these statements, the national team manager Aggelos Anastasiadis stressed that the Arsenal defender places himself out of the squad since he doesn’t believe in its capabilities anymore, going on to add that two unlucky results are not enough to shake his faith in the team.
Anastasiadis pointed out that his contract expires in November and until then, he will continue to do his best in order to take Greece to the Euro 2020 finals.
Despite his optimism, it appears he is losing more and more followers as a few hours after Papastathopoulos’ statements, the vice-chairman of the Hellenic Football Federation, Nikos Vakalis took to his social media account to publicly apologise for the selection he and his associates made regarding the position of head coach for the national team.
“Selfishness is a bad characteristic of ourselves and we should suppress it,” said the post on Vakalis’ Facebook profile.
“More specifically when it has to do with the common good and especially when we’re talking about a national team.
“And when there’s (literally) not a single Greek that supports your logic, then something’s wrong (it isn’t raining) and dignity needs to overcome the ego.
“For all that I’m concerned, I apologise for my share of responsibility. I believed even before these two games that he (Anastasiadis) was the only one who could revitalise the team in this short amount of time.
“But I can’t be right and everyone else wrong. We are all judged by our results.”
By the looks of things, there will likely be further developments regarding the Greek national team coach within the coming weeks.