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Because of the way the Champions League used to be structured with it's two-phase group stages, one season in those days was the equivalent of two seasons now. So they got double the experience and twice as quickly. Karagounis got 12-14 UCL games per season, not including the qualifiers. For players like him to get that opportunity to play against Juventus, Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, and Barcelona, and with a strong Panathinaikos too that actually stood a chance of upsetting the odds, while learning up close from the likes of Paulo Sousa, it really made him as a player. And in those days, we had at least two teams in the UCL. Our players today don't get those kind of opportunities unless they play at OSFP or if they go abroad to a club good enough to compete at that level.
The big stars of the 2007 and 2012 u19 generations were Ninis and Katidis. Both should have become important players for the men's team given the trajectory they were on.
In Ninis case, he proved too small, too brittle, and too slow. He failed to adapt to the Pirlo role and lacked the pace to play on the wing. Arguably, after he tore his ACL, he lost a step and I think suffered mentally. He couldn't dribble at players with the same ease. Before he could glide past players, but after he really struggled to beat his man. He also made a number of career choices, each worst than the one before.
It's strange to see Stafylidis as the captain for Greece and it's even stranger to think Katidis could have been captaining Greece right now instead. That may or may not have been so, but we don't know now because of how the EPO and the commies set about destroying his career after he made a stupid mistake with that fascist/roman salute. The Katidis I saw knew how to rise to the occasion. Of all the players who were coming through, he was the best representation we had of that dogged, determined style of play that marked players like Salpingidis, Giannakopoulos and Karagounis (or going back further, players like Domazos). A very hard working player who put everything on the line. Sort of like what we see from Mantalos now for Greece.
These are two players who could very well have filled in that hole left in the team by Katsouranis and Karagounis. There were other players too; Lazaros and Kone, Tachtsidis and Samaras, Tziolis and Tzavellas, etc. A failure to adequately replace Karagounis and Katsouranis was a major reason for our failures in 2016 and that failure led to the failure in 2018. As for our failures to qualify for Euro 2020, that comes down to Sokratis and Manolas not willing to put up with Anastasiadis. They really should have just sucked it up. At the same time, Anastasiadis himself is not without blame. It's not that he's just a dinosaur of a coach, he had no sense of how monumental a job he had leading Greece. To him, it was like leading a Super league team. He just didn't get it.
The big stars of the 2007 and 2012 u19 generations were Ninis and Katidis. Both should have become important players for the men's team given the trajectory they were on.
In Ninis case, he proved too small, too brittle, and too slow. He failed to adapt to the Pirlo role and lacked the pace to play on the wing. Arguably, after he tore his ACL, he lost a step and I think suffered mentally. He couldn't dribble at players with the same ease. Before he could glide past players, but after he really struggled to beat his man. He also made a number of career choices, each worst than the one before.
It's strange to see Stafylidis as the captain for Greece and it's even stranger to think Katidis could have been captaining Greece right now instead. That may or may not have been so, but we don't know now because of how the EPO and the commies set about destroying his career after he made a stupid mistake with that fascist/roman salute. The Katidis I saw knew how to rise to the occasion. Of all the players who were coming through, he was the best representation we had of that dogged, determined style of play that marked players like Salpingidis, Giannakopoulos and Karagounis (or going back further, players like Domazos). A very hard working player who put everything on the line. Sort of like what we see from Mantalos now for Greece.
These are two players who could very well have filled in that hole left in the team by Katsouranis and Karagounis. There were other players too; Lazaros and Kone, Tachtsidis and Samaras, Tziolis and Tzavellas, etc. A failure to adequately replace Karagounis and Katsouranis was a major reason for our failures in 2016 and that failure led to the failure in 2018. As for our failures to qualify for Euro 2020, that comes down to Sokratis and Manolas not willing to put up with Anastasiadis. They really should have just sucked it up. At the same time, Anastasiadis himself is not without blame. It's not that he's just a dinosaur of a coach, he had no sense of how monumental a job he had leading Greece. To him, it was like leading a Super league team. He just didn't get it.
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