The most… ready National team of the last 20 years

What we saw at Opap Arena on Thursday night is true that we have years to see. Regardless of the opponent, the conditions, the criticality of the game and other parameters, we saw the most prepared National team of the last several years, not to mention twenty years.

We start with the footballers who were really made up and ready for this particular match. With shining eyes, with faith for victory with a thirst for qualification. They fought as if they had not met a few days ago, but as if they had been playing together for a very long time, members of a team that knew what it wanted on the field and did not give the opponent any right to deprive it of it.

Remember the goal phases, especially 2-0, 3-0 and 4-0. Everything was the result of an excellent team effort with the internationals changing the ball with their eyes closed and always easily finding the player to push it into the net, whether it was Pelkas, Ioannidis, or Kourbelis.

We have long seen such teamwork from the representative group, a fact that was not only seen in the goals, but also in many lost phases that came from a high level of cooperation and after several balls.

Of course, Gustavo Poget is largely responsible for this. Putting aside what has happened with the issue of renewal, he put into practice what he said, that he will work for the team unaffected and with the sole aim of qualifying for the Euros.

Even the choice of Pelkas, which surprised many and raised some complaints before the cross, fully justified him, from the first minutes of the game, with the penalty he won in the 8th minute and the goal he scored a little later.

In all this, there may be a counterargument, that the National team did not have a rival to be reckoned with, but Kazakhstan, which was objectively a mediocre team. It is certain that if there was another team against the National team in New Philadelphia, neither the score would be opened in the first minutes, nor the scoreboard would show the emphatic 5-0 at the end.

However, what Kazakhstan’s potential cannot erase, and would not change with any opponent, is the excellent atmosphere in the ranks of the National team and the belief of the footballers, that they deserve to be on the pitches of Germany next June.

Something that was also seen in Greece’s progress in the qualifiers, in a particularly difficult group, with the sole exception of the away match in the Netherlands. He fought all the other games to the end, even against the European Champion and World Runner-up, France.

A tight-knit team that avoids big words and plays for the whole, projecting “we” and not “me”.

All this, of course, must be repeated in the last match, on Tuesday against Georgia. All will be lost, if in Tbilisi, the National team of Greece does not show up as ready as they did against Kazakhstan.

But I take it for granted, that here the internationals have arrived, a breath before the return to the top competitions after 10 years, they will present the same image as in the Opap Arena, mainly for themselves. Because the qualification will be theirs…