Here you can see the full squad: http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/aris-thessaloniki/kader/verein_605.html 31 players in total. Quite big squad and there are still some days to sign players, players without contracts with clubs only. We will also see what's going to happen with the players of Olympiakos Volou also. Average age of the squad is only 24,9 which makes our squad one of the youngest in the league. We have 2 friendly games this weekend. On Saturday against Doxa Dramas and Sunday against Epanomi. So everyone will get some playing time.
Game against Atromitos on Sunday, first home game of the season. Atromitos is a good team, they did some strong signings this summer. It should be a good game. Sifakis is injured and probably won't play. Damn that national team, every time we send players there they get injured. The problem is our 2nd goalkeeper also is injured so the 18-year old Dioudis will have to play. He is talented, plays for the U19 NT but he never played a official game before. Will be interesting to see how he plays in front a full stadium demanding a victory. Nacho, Portilla and Giannitsis are also injured. Good news is that Cesarec is back though.
PAME Aris! Just get a message to the defenders that they need to do a great job so that Dioudis has little to do.
Yikes! Well he'll have to learn somehow! What ended up happening with nacho? What kind of knock did he pick up?
So Tsiolis picked a squad with 19 players to the game and one will get dropped before the game. All three goalkeepers are in the squad, hopefully Sifakis or Vellidis will be ready. Nacho just has a muscle injury so it's not very serious. Maybe it was a mistake to put him in so early since he hasn't played any games for about a month. Or he just tried to prove the coach a little bit too much too early.
Starting eleven: [LINEUP-4-4-2]Castillo, Cesarec, Kapetanos, Toja, Faty, Soltani, Michel, Lazaridis, Dickoh, Neto, Sifakis[/LINEUP-4-4-2] Sifakis is playing after all. It's not sure we are playing a 4-4-2 though, might be more of 4-2-3-1. Link here: http://myp2p.pe/livesports1.php Game starts in exactly 30 minutes. Should be a good game, Atromitos have a strong squad this season and they are under the wing of Olympiakos... A referee from Pireaus also hmmm...
What a disaster! 0-1 loss at home against Atromitos. Red card from the end of first half. We gonna have serious problems this year if we keep going like this. Coach and players have to start understanding which team they are playing. Idiot move from Soltani, to such a thing in when there is a half to go and we knew who the ref was. It wont be a easy year, Greek league now have olympiakos and 10 satellite clubs of theirs! Damn Castillo was free against the keeper and he decided to dribble him so he ended up to wide out and lost the chance. The next minute Atromitos scored on a header from a set piece, our big problem as we have seen during all friendlies. No one played well today, maybe Dickoh. The rest were disasters. So fuc*ing disappointed...
The thing that piss us off is the effort. Anyone can lose sometimes, we don't expect the team to win every game. Even though we have high goals this season. But at least we expect and demand them to give 100% every second of the game. ARIS is the god of war as you all know, so we expect 11 warriors out there! Not highly paid divas just running whenever they feel for it. Sifakis criticized some of his teammates after the game. He didn't say names but he said that some players haven't understood which team they are playing for yet and that some players are fighting and running the whole game while some other players are just walking around. Tsiolis also pointed out that he was not happy with the team and things has to change. At least this year we see this after 2 games and not after 25 like last year. There is still a almost a whole season to play, nothing is lost, but they better wake up now otherwise they will have serious problems... I don't like to point out specific players to blame because I think the whole team is to blame when it goes bad. But in this case I will point out 3 players that needs to wake up and start playing like they can, otherwise they should look elsewhere. I'm talking about Toja, Soltani and Castillo. Toja was subbed after 30 minutes yesterday because he was a disaster, losing the ball all the time in situations that you are not allowed to. Then he was just walking the rest of time. Then we have Soltani that we brought in because he has quality and the kind of winner mentality we wanted. Though he seems to have misunderstood some things, winner and fighter doesn't mean to throw the ball in the opponent players face and leaving your team with 10 men for 45 minutes. He has to understood which team he is playing for, this is not Iraklis where he can get away with bullshit like that. A fine from the board is waiting for him and if he does it again I don't see him playing more for this team. Then we also have Castillo. He is the highest paid player of the club. He talked a lot before the season about us going to fight for the championship title. Then he doesn't even perform against the teams that we should beat easily. He doesn't show that winner mentality he showed during the end of last season. He comes free with the keeper and he wants to dribble, just put the damn ball in the net! All these have something in common. That they are great players, but if they don't want to play and if they don't want give everything they have on the pitch for this team then they can look for some other team where that kind of behavior is accepted. Anyway we are still in beginning of the season, I still have high hopes for this season. We signed a player today. Jurica Vranjes the Croatian NT midfielder. I remember him from Werder Bremen and Leverkusen. He is a very good player in Bundesliga, the question is what shape he is in. If he is in good shape he will give the team a boost and maybe even raise it a level. I heard that we have a agreement with Khalifa Sankare from Oly. Volos also. He needs to get out of his contract with them first though. If that piece of sh*t club gets relegated like they should we will probably sign Umbides from them as well.
Regarding Toja - not trying to defend him since I know that if he is not focused then his play reflects that. However, it is possible that he is having trouble focusing this past week since a friend of his, a former teammate (Bobby Rhine), died last week from an unexpected heart attack at the age of just 35. Everyone who met Bobby, let alone those who were actually friends with him, have been devastated and walking around in a state of shock all week. He was very well liked and was known as an extremely positive person within the locker room.
Oh I didn't know about that. Really horrible that someone that young pass away. Toja is a good player, unfortunately he is very inconsistent and quite undisciplined sometimes. Hopefully he returns to the good performances we saw during last season. We have many central midfielders now so some bad games can really cost him a place in the starting lineup. Faty, Toja, Portilla, Vranjes, Nacho Garcia, Prittas, Papasterianos and the youngsters Katidis and Ikonomopoulos. Also Kapetanos can play CM. So that makes it 7 players for 2 positions, 3 sometimes. Depending on how we are playing. Plus 2 youngsters and Kapetanos.
Today they found the owner of Kavala too, they have been looking for him for about 2 months. Exactly like Beos the Olympiakos Volou owner, Psomiadis was also thrown into jail. Also the final decision about those 2 teams came. They got relegated to the 4th division. We can a expect a mass escape now by the players of those 2 teams since they will all be set free. Some players are really wanted by about ALL teams in Greece. Sankare and Umbides are the ones we are interested in, probably the best 2 players also. But there are some more good players like, Juan Martin, Monje, Szelesi and Alvarez from Olympiakos Volou. A couple good players in Kavala too but I don't think we will try to sign any of their players.
ARIS on National Geographic! http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/photo-contest/entries/65885/view/
We didn't play this weekend since we were supposed to play against Kavala that has been relegated. ARIS won't play next weekend either because we were supposed to play Olympiakos Volou, the other team that's been relegated. So our next game is 2nd of October if nothing changes and they decide to replace those two teams. Almost one month without games. I don't know if that is good or not, we were in quite bad shape against Atromitos so it could be good. One month is a long time though, so it's hard to be match ready after such a long time. At least some players will have some more time to get in shape. Nacho might be ready for the game against Skoda Xanthi the 2nd of October, Portilla will be fully recovered by then too. The keepers that had some injuries should be in better shape also Vranjes and Iacob that missed the pre-season might be ready for their debuts. Soltani got a three match ban for that silly thing last. Aris will appeal to reduce the ban.
Fuego this is for you Aris flag at a game in Bolivia. I think it's your rival team though [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYUxkaP6w70"]ARIS KAI STHN BOLIVIA.. - YouTube[/ame]
Yea..... damn Strongest.... They're our PAOK. We just beat the hell out of them though 5-3 this weekend. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkcb8KOl5Cc"]Bolivar 5 The Strongest 3 - YouTube[/ame] We actually have a really good '10' that Hoyos (who is doing amazing right now for us, finally doing what he promised and getting us results) brought, Damian Lizio. Ex river plate product. GOOOOD '10'!
5 - 3 typical Hoyos result I'm not surprised to hear about that player. Hoyos is really good finding cheap unknown players. He did the same with most of his teams. If you haven't seen any improvements on the youngsters yet, you probably will soon because he works a lot with personal development with them. ARIS won against Kalamaria today in a friendly. 2-0 with the youngster Gianniotas and Kapetanos scoring the goals. Nice to be back on the winning track even the though it was just a friendly. Vranjes made his debut for the team also. Sankare is in Thessaloniki waiting to be officially free from Olympiakos Volos so that he can sign for us.
Also, with some ex' Aris players news, Sanjurjo scored a hell of a goal for Aurora and won man of the match as they crushed their paraguayan counterpart 5-2. They won, and next match they play Vasco De Gama. They are a fun team to watch, with some good 'bargain' players. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-y1AsCszoE"]Aurora - Nacional (P) (5-2) - YouTube[/ame]
Sanjurjo, he had so much potential. Could have been in a really good European team by now. Unfortunately he didn't have the brains, many bad decisions by him. He even ended up in some small clubs in Greece I hardly heard of, after his time at Aris. Not very long time after he scored a fantastic goal against Roma in the UEFA cup. It will be hard for Aurora against Vasco though, they are playing really well in the Brazilian league lately.
Sifakis underwent a knee surgery today in Belgium. He will be out for about 4 to 5 months. That really sucks The Euro 2012 is in danger for him too. I hope he recovers quickly! It looks like we will go for a replacement, Jakupovic from Olympiakos Volou is the one that is being rumored to us. Actually he is being rumored to most teams in Greece. He agreed with Tottenham but since the transfer period will only open for the players from Olympiakos Volou and Kavala to sign for other Greek teams he wasn't able to go there. The thing we are waiting for now is that EPO announce that the transfer period opens again for the players from those 2 teams. ARIS already agreed with their 2 best players, Sankare and Umbides but also the Spaniard Noe Acosta. We will also see what will happen with Jakupovic. I have faith in Vellidis, he is one of the most talented Greek keepers. Very similar to Sifakis but less experienced. If we give him the chance to play during this time I think he will have his breakthrough year. The problem is that we only have Dioudis behind him though, so if Vellidis get's injured or suspended we will have problem.
Another win yesterday against Larisa. 2-1 goals scored by Papazacharias and Soltani. Beautiful goal scored by Papazacharias: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RindnSikbyk&feature=player_embedded"]PRESSARIS: ?? ?????????? ???? ??? ??????????? ??? ??????! - YouTube[/ame] Toja had a shot off the post too: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiuuWmhxNno&feature=player_embedded"]PRESSARIS: ?? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ???? ?????? - ???? - YouTube[/ame]
Nacho already back in full training. He might be in the squad for the game on Sunday. We have problems with the forwards though. Cesarec is injured, Iacob not ready to play yet and Soltani is suspended. Damn EPO is taking so long to open the transfer window for the players from the clubs that got relegated. 4 players from Olympiakos Volou already agreed with us but they need the green light from the federation to be able to play for other club though.
FINALLY!!! EPO decided to set all players from the relegated teams free and give them a couple of weeks to sign for other clubs. So tomorrow we will announce the signings of Khalifa Sankare, the CB that the whole league tried to sign. He admitted on the radio today that he said no to olympiakos, aek and paok. Javier Umbides the star of their team. He was also wanted by almost all teams. He plays mostly as a right winger but he can play as a '10' and at the left side too. 5 goals and 8 assists last season. Eldin Jakupovic that almost signed with Tottenham. Everton wanted him too. Good goalkeeper that also is a Swiss NT player. We weren't planning on signing a keeper but Sifakis got injured so we had to. Jakupovic played for Grashoppers and Lokomotiv Moscow before he joined Oly. Volos. Noé Acosta is the 4th player. Spanish left midfielder but he can play at pretty much every position on the midfield. He is a Real Madrid product, he then played for some small Spanish teams and then Romanian Cluj before Olympiakos Volos. Here are some videos of our new players: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzWyihiTrw8"]Javier Umbides - Olympiakos Volou - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-j-irbLOY4&feature=related"]Eldin Jakupovic - Olympiakos Volou - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC3t32KGRgw"]NOE ACOSTA - U Cluj - YouTube[/ame] Also look at this video, aek-Olympiakos Volou 0-4 last season Sankare scored first goal, Umbides the 2nd. Both assisted by Kapetanos that we signed during the beginning of the season. Then Kapetanos scored the 4th himself. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmdkIjHO_3I&feature=related"]??? - ?????????? ????? 0-4 - YouTube[/ame] Another good thing is that all of them are in very good ages. Umbides 29, Sankare 27, Jakupovic 26 and Acosta 27. They might make their debuts against Xanthi on Sunday.