Greece World Cup Squad Preview

Written by Dave Allan Monday, 07 June 2010 18:37

England World Cup Blog

Greece somehow manged to win the European Championship in 2004 with a squad who played as a team but this current bunch may struggle to make it out of the first stage despite not facing the strongest of opposition in Argentina, Nigeria and South Korea.

It would have been almost harder for Greece not to qualify for World Cup 2010 given the lack of experience and quality in their group which included Israel, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova and Switzerland. They did have to overcome Ukraine over two leg in a play-off and did well to secure a 1-0 away win before drawing 0-0 in the return in Athens.

The current squad is one of the least familiar of the European qualifiers with only eight of the squad playing outside Greece - but with the Greeks unwillingness to pay tax this is no too surprising.

Their defence is experienced with Giourkas Seitaridis of Panathinaikos and Liverpool's Sotirios Kyrgiakos both having won over 50 caps for their country while Vangelis Moras and Sokratis Papastathopoulos both ply their trade in Italy at Bolgna and Genoa respectively.

The key player is their captain Giorgos Karagounis. After relatively unsuccessful spells abroad at Inter Milan and Benfica, Karagounis has returned home to Panathinaikos and has since matured into a fine player captaining the side to a league and cup double in 2010. Two other midfield regulars are Kostas Katsouranis and Christos Patsatzoglou.

Celtic's Georgios Samaras looks set to lead the line up front despite never really convincing in the SPL and his likely partner is the German based Theofanis Gekas who has scored a tidy 20 goals in just 47 appearances for his country.

The odds of 330/1 on Betfair suggest their chances of winning the World Cup are slim but should Nigeria (far from impressive in the warm-up games) and South Korea fail to deliver then the odds of 4/1 to qualify to interesting.

Goalkeepers: Kostas Chalkias (PAOK), Alexandros Tzorvas (Panathinaikos), Michael Sifakis (Aris)

Defenders: Loukas Vyntra, Giourkas Seitaridis and Nikos Spyropoulos (Panathinaikos), Vangelis Moras (Bologna), Avraam Papadopoulos and Vasilis Torosidis (Olympiakos), Sotiris Kyrgiakos (Liverpool), Stelios Malezas (PAOK), Sokratis Papastathopoulos (Genoa)

Midfielders: Kostas Katsouranis, Sotiris Ninis and Giorgos Karagounis (Panathinaikos), Christos Patsatzoglou (Omonia), Alexandros Tziolis (Siena), Sakis Prittas (Aris)

Strikers: Dimitris Salpingidis (Panathinaikos), Theofanis Gekas (Eintracht Frankfurt), Giorgos Samaras (Celtic), Pantelis Kapetanos (Steaua Bucharest), Angelos Haristeas (Nurnberg)
 

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