That would be amazing! But there are coaches like Ronald Koeman, Frank Rijkaard and some more who are free at the moment.
I just want Grant back. In this awesome group that we drew, I'm sure Grant would be able to take us to the World Cup.
how can you say that israel has a better team on paper??? because of liverpool? most of your players come the from the laughable israeli league. Most teams in Greek league would own haifa lol. we have players in atletico madrid, werder bremen, bayer leverkusen, celtic, portsmouth, frankfurt, genoa, panathinaikos, aek and olympiakos... and yes karagounis was a star, he was the marked man, panathinaikos won a group which consisted of werder bremen and inter milan...karagounis scored top 10 goal of the tourny thus far vs werder, he scored the goal vs anorthosis which won us the group and he scored the lone goal in villarreal. there is no comparing these teams, greece was the most successful team in euro between Wc06 and euro 08. they finished with the most points in europe and were the 1st team to qualify for the euro finals. we got unlucky in euro. our formation and strategy did not help, but anyone who watched greeces games in euro would realise that they didnt get dominated. ibras long range goal gave sweden the win. thats unpredictable. vs russia it was a gaf by our goalie that left a wide open net for russia to score, then we hit the post and scored on 'offside' which after being reviewed was admitted as an error. we'll see on saturday, i expect the right thing to happen. 2 0 greece
just because karagouni is 32 doesnt mean he cannot run. 4 years older than benayoun, do you think hes an old man? hes a profesional athlete i dont think that he will have a problem putting in effort for his country.
Hey again. I didn't say that Israel are better then greece on paper. I said that Israel didnt lose at home for 3 years except croatia . the teams like england , ireland, france, ivory coast and swiss are in th e same level or better then greece. Israel are approved a lot in the last year, our youngs and talents players grow up and they play very well at all. If I take the results at home in the past and the level of my team (Israel), I cant see How greece will beat us.... sorry I really dont see it. If the first game was in Greece the situation was MOST MOST MOST different. The game in Greece be affected without a doubt the result from the game in Israel. p.s. sorry for my english.... I hope you understand me
Like I said, the Greeks had a solid team, but it's now old. There's a difference between having a team 3 years ago where everyone was 27-30 - aka in their prime when they already had a lot of experience but didn't yet begin to slow down - and a team where everyone is 30-33. Those 3 years from 2006 to 2009 make a difference. You should go over the Israeli lineup. Look at how young the team is. Of course you know nobody. Of course they haven't proven themselves. That's because they are young. You may well win one or both games. I can't tell you right now if Kara will show signs of age or if Sahar will display brilliant scoring ability this year or two years from now. But you are severely underestimating Israel. It is a young, up-and-coming team. Benayoun is the only regular who's over 26. The Israeli team may not be ready for prime time, but ... it may be. Long term, I would rather have Sahar and Assulin than Kara and Basinas. Your team better do well this time around because in a couple of years, half of your team will be only a shell of itself. Oh wait... it already was last summer... and yes, I watched all the Greek (and Swiss) games because I knew that you guys would be with Israel. It wasn't just bad luck. You just weren't a good team and something bad was bound to happen one way or another. You may rebound and plow along the rest of the qualifiers to get into the WC, but being a year older and facing greater competition in the Finals than in the Qualifiers, Greece will lose all games and go home. I am not saying this just to spite you. I have nothing against Greece or the Greek people. I was perfectly happy when you guys won the EC. Happier than if one of the big teams did it. I was glad for Greece just as I was glad for Denmark, just as I will be glad if Finland or Ukraine or Serbia win in the future. But this is no longer your time. You had a great run. Don't kid yourself that a great resume means great results. Five years ago, your players had far lesser resumes than they do today, and yet they played far superior football. Resumes could be deceptive, and so can youth.
There are 2 reasons why our team is mainly consisted of older experienced players. One: Our coach is conservative and prefers sound experience. Two: our players are still good enough to compete at an international level, which is why Otto doesnt feel the need to rush any youth into action. Now, I, and most greek fans definitely want to see our young talent on the pitch sooner than later, but we have to live with rehhagel until after the world cup. I think our team is made up of a good mix of youth and experience. We do have youngsters in the lineup and we will have more by the time WC comes along. We can field a similar young lineup to israel, but we choose not to because we have too much depth, you dont, and you are forced to field whoever you have. That said, I would put our U23 team ( ie Ninis, Christodoulopoulos,Torosids, G & K Papadopoulos, koutsianikoulis, Papastathopoulos, etc) up against your NT any day. Most of our young players are already developing in big clubs and not in israeli league. Point finale. Let's see saturday, should be good game.
Israel's U21 team performed really wellin the UEFA U21. It was even with Germany in its group (beating out Northern Ireland and lesser teams), though Germs finished first on goal diff. Isreal didn't squeak by wins either, outscoring the opposition 16-5. That's very solid performance. During the playofs, Israel had a draw in Italy, but unfortunately lost at home. Israel U21 did better than Greece U21 in the tournament, and Sahar - the team's far and away best player - was gone in a lot of matches. I'd say Israel U21 is better both on paper and on the pitch. There's an awful lot of young talent on that team, and even more in the next tournament as Sahar will be joined by Assulin.
Nobody is underestimating Greece, but let's not pretend that it's Italy or France. Greece is a talented, but aging and out-of-shape/injured team. It could be beaten.
Ok here you are wrong. There is enough Israeli talent in the big clubs. Just to name a few: Gai Assulin - Barcelona Nes Zamir - getafe (wanted by big clubs in Spain) Ben Sahar - Belong to Chelsea Tamer Abu Taha - Hamburg SV Nir Mansour - Real Madrid Alex Zahavi - Sporting Lisbon And don't underestimate our players because they play in the Israeli league. They still have talent and watched closely by scouters all over Europe. You will hear about more Israeli players in the future I can guarantee you that. Look I never underestimate Greece, but I surely don't think they are better. Yes you're favorite in these games, but don't ever expect an easy life in this game. I guess we'll just see what happened, it can go either way...
Ain't that the truth! Yes, Greeks are a favorite, but a slight favorite and Israel can definitely win. Not saying it definitely WILL win, but it definitely CAN win. Greeks overestimate themselves and underestimate Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_national_football_team i dont see all ur big teams...and its barcelona B, our players can go there 2 but they prefer playing top flight football in greece
He put up all the Israeli youngsters playing mostly for junior teams. But those playing in EU are: ENGLAND Benayoun - Liverpool Ben-Haim - recently was in Chelsea, still in the English Premier League Tamir Cohen - Bolton GERMANY Alberman - Borussia HOLLAND Sahar - according to his coach, he's 2 heads above everyone else on his team in De Graafschap SPAIN Awat - Mallorca BELGIUM - not as strong as other leagues, but it's a decent EU league, better than Greece Golan Barda Ziv Strool Vermut played 22 games for Genk last year as a 22-year-old before joining Hapoel Tel Aviv which is competing closely for Israel championships. Also, Beitar and Maccabi Haifa aren't pushover teams. Beitar really dominated last year and won the last two championships. Maccabi Netanya and Hapoel Tel Aviv also have very decent squads. When you see a 20 year old Biyal playing for Haifa, 23 year old Vermut for Tel Aviv, 24 year old Itzhaki for Beitar, 21 year old Shechter for Netanya, and so on, don't think that they aren't promising players. They are just young and they are now proving themselves for Israel's top teams before they will ship off to Europe. These 4 are already key players on Israel's (clearly) best teams. With more experience and as Europeans familiarize themselves with these guys (in the UEFA Cup, WC qualifiers, etc), they will be in Europe's top leagues soon enough.
very good but i can say the same about our younsters...i dont doubt that israel has some good young players but they are not better than greece's atm saying that belgian league is better than greek strips all ur credibility. panathinaikos and olympiakos they are better than anderlecht and brugge. i understand that your youth is still developing in israel befoe they go abroad, but so our young greeks, and in a better league and they are involved in european competitions.
Greeks have better top teams, but Belgium has better depth. I would take the middle and lower teams in Belgium over the same teams in Greece. Greece is somewhat similar to the Israeli basketball league, though not to the same degree, where the top team Maccabi Tel Aviv just dominates the league every year. In Greece Olympiakos won 12 out of the last 13 championships. The last time a team other than Olympiakos, Panathinaikos and AEK won the Greek championship was in 1987-88. Since 1946-47, only 5 teams won the championship. So we know pretty much who's capable of what. [Except AEK almost collapsed a couple years ago.] In Belgium, you'll see wins by some teams other than the same 3-5 squads, such as Genk, Lierse, Mechelen, etc. They too have their rich clubs, but I just think their mid to lower clubs have a better shot at it than do Greek middling teams.
You missed my point. Every country has young players, that's not unique. The issue is that Israel isn't expected to lose any regulars before WC'14. Greece will lose a bunch by EC'12 and several more will show signs of age in WC'10 if you make it. I am not being spiteful, just an observation. So Israel will likely just get better. Assulin may turn into another Messi or into another Golan, but either way the team will improve. It may get another above average player who would give Israel offensive diversification, or it may get a superstar. The same is true for Sahar, though his floor is higher and ceiling is lower (he's closer to being ready than Assulin and therefore less likely to bust, but he also has less raw talent). So let's say Israel will add two more offensive players on par with Golan, plus a few more support players. That's really the worst case scenario for the team. It would still be a very big improvement. If Israel had a couple more good offensive midfielders and strikers, it would've just blown out Latvia instead of giving it a chance to come back in the last couple of minutes. But let's say that the best case scenario happens and both Assulin and Sahar turn out better than Benayoun, and several more kids become better than the average current Israeli player. Now the team is going places. Either way, israel will almost definitely improve. Greece will lose several of its top guys. Maybe the youngsters will replace them and be even better. Or maybe they will be worse. We don't know it, but I wouldn't bet on Greece improving in the coming years. I would bet 2:1 against you guys making it to either EC'12 or WC'14, regardless of the group you'll wind up in. I would bet in favor of Israel making it to one of those. Barring career-ending injuries, by 2014 qualifiers Israel will likely be a top-15 team in the world (in terms of talent/skill, not FIFA rankings).
And one more thing: you make it sound like you have this great team that has just too much talent for any youth, and all the Israeli young guns would be nowhere near your team had they been Greek. That's not true. It's not as if you've been setting the world on fire over the last year. It's true that Israel gave up a goal to Latvia at the end, costing it 2 points. But it dominated the game. Too bad Benayoun hit the goal post just a couple minutes before then, or it would've been an easy 2-0 win. You lost to Switzerland at home, not exactly a huge team. In UEFA'08, you finished last and collected the least amount of prize money, losing all 3 games. Spain had a great squad, Russia had a young and up-and-coming team, but Sweden was really a weak team for a European championship. Had Denmark beaten Sweden, instead of the Swedes getting a free 3-0 win for an abandoned game that was tied at that point, then Sweden wouldn't even have made it into the playoff round of qualifiers. Greece lost to it. So against the 4 decent and good teams (Spain, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland), the results have been straight losses. In friendly games, the draw the ok, but not good Dannish team was fine. The draw against Italy was nice, but the draw against Armenia was just embarrassing. In 2008, you didn't beat a single team ranked in the top 50 by FIFA. Sure those ranks aren't perfect, but let's look at your wins: Slovakia, Latvia, Mold and Lux. Not exactly teams that deserve top ranking. If you beat Israel, it will be the first decent team you've beaten since 2007. Think about that one because you praise the qualify of your old guys. Maybe your young guys aren't playing because Otto knows that they just aren't ready.
On that note, friendly discussion is fine, but as opposed to the other foreign fans that have come on to the israel board for discussion, you have been cocky and a bit insulting, while they were all courteous and gracious. I think it's time to hang up the hat and we'll just see how this game goes. Let's just all hope its a good game.
I've been reading some other forums and these Greeks are outright anti-Semitic. Not all of them, but a distinct majority. I don't like throwing this word around too much and I've argued with Jews who overuse it, but there's no other way to describe it. One called for an outright genocide of Jews. Several others denied the Holocaust. The majority argue that Israel has no right to exist. Everyone is tripping over each other to come up with a bigger word for Israel's evil. It is of course not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. However, it can be. Nobody with a brain actually says that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but anti-Semites use this as a way to defend themselves. It is one thing to disagree with the policies of the state of Israel. If you want to say that Israel's response to Arabs firing rockets into Israel was a step too far, I will disagree with you, but we can have a respectful intellectual discussion. At the end of such discussion, I can buy you a beer and we'll go hang out together. But their claims are nothing like that. They claim that Israel is committing "genocides" and unnamed massacres. Innocent people die in all wars. That doesn't mean that a massacre or a genocide is taking place. If Israel, a nuclear power with a dominant army in the Mideast, wanted to commit a genocide, there would be no Palestinians in one week, and nobody would stop the Jews. If their conspiracy theories about the Israel lobby controlling Washington are true, that would make it that much easier for Israel to commit a genocide and get away with it. But even if it's not true, nobody will want engage in a nuclear war with Israel over Palestinians. There were no massacres and no genocides. The fact that the Greeks are arguing with such ferocious hate, trying to make it look like every loose cannon is Auschwitz, while at the same time ignoring everyone else - slavery in Sudan, Islamic terrorism around the world, the Yugoslav conflict, etc - says that they are anti-Semitic. They are welcome to criticize Israel, but they aren't doing it, they are spreading hate about the Jews (using words like Israel, Lobby, etc) by accusing them of everything they can think of. If Greeks can think of a bad word, they accuse Jews of that. On football forums too! Their claims that Israel shouldn't exist because it commits massacres is also verging on anti-Semitism because this standard is not applied to anyone else. Nobody argued the same for countries that really did commit genocide: Germany, Russia (several times), Turkey, Rwanda, Sudan, etc. Also, imagine how the Geeks would've reacted if Israel would start arresting people just for calling themselves Palestinian. But that is exactly what Greece is doing - people get arrested for calling themselves Macedonian. Greece also committed ethnic cleansing of Turks (as did Turkey of Greeks at the same time) in what they refer to as a "population exchange". Most importantly, Greece was the last non-Muslim country to have openly anti-Semitic laws. Anti-Semitism was an official state policy in Greece until the late 1980s, which explains why everything they know about the Jews is so negative. Maybe I will feel better about them in the morning, but having spent the evening reading Greek comments about the horrors of Israeli Jews ("Israel"), American Jews ("Lobby") and European Jews ("Zionists settlers"), I've come to hate the Greeks. Maybe tomorrow I will clear my head and feel differently. But today and tomorrow, they will still hate the Jews. Their comments are absolutely uncalled for. If they have proof of Israel purposely committing massacres, let them prove it. But their vastly exaggerated claims backed by nothing at all just prove that they are a hateful people who until the late 1980s were raised in an officially anti-Semitic country and therefore they hate the Jews regardless of what Israel, "the Lobby" or "Zionists" will do.
Ranger99 I didn't want to bring this up, or even get into this subject, but I'm afraid you're right. Greece is one of the countries that hate Israel and Jewish people the most outside the Arab world...What's the cause? Lots of immigrants and extreme far right, or in other words Neo-Nazis. Don't ever forget how Greece sent their Jews to the dead camps... I know sometimes the Greeks comments make us hate them even more, but not all Greeks think the same, even if it's seems like majority. I never judged a whole nation because of some bad apples... BUT, some proportion guys, TRG22 wasn't talking about politics (unless I missed something), he only said his opinion about the game and players...We both have lack of knowledge toward each others teams. This is why we have forums for, to discuss and familiarize ourselves with the opponent. Please keep this level of discussion. It's the only forum that I wished not to see any politics involved.