The John van't Schip replacement thread

[Greekfreak]

My friend, that clip does not show any such thing. I think you have a perceived thoughts on van ‘t Ship and seen that.

From that clip I can tell that Van Shit had two mediocre gyros that day with no tzatziki.
I can tell that he got to the training grounds in a blue Saab with tinted windows and the AC was fucked.
It's obvious that the air was a balmy 26 degrees celsius with 63% humidity.
I can see Barkas has a case of the runs and is wearing Depends.

I could not tell if our current first-choice CB pairing was unhappy.

[Amorgos]

[Don Giovanni]

Van't Schip made the mistake of turning Greece's offense over to very inexperienced players and who lacked chemistry. Even if these players had a run of games together, I doubt they'd compliment each other. Vrousaj and Pavlidis need to return to the U21 team. Koulouris and Masouras can't carry this team on their own (certainly not with the score at 1-1 in the 85th minute). Mitroglou, Donis, and Tachtsidis needed to be on this team. These are more experienced players who are capable at this level. Losing Fortounis to injury is killing us. Fetfatzidis is a good player, but his problems suggest he's on the downward trajectory. He very nearly fashioned two goals almost completely on his own (no other player on the team had the kind of talent he showcased), but he looks rusty and out of shape. He wasn't sharp enough to put away his chances. His lack of fitness and form hurt us, but when he was on the pitch Liechtenstein were made to sweat at least. Once he was off, there was no hope of Greece scoring again. The last kick of the ball he had was our last chance at a second goal.

Some players simply are not good enough. Bakakis is one such player. He can produce the odd golden cross or dazzle with a bit of skill, but he's very clumsy and beyond his willingness to run he's not much of a footballer. Don't take it from me, both Fetfatzidis and Sokratis refused to play passes to Bakakis when the pass was on and necessary. Neither of them trusted Bakakis with the ball and felt passing it to him would be a waste. They're mistaken to think that, but they still should have played him the ball. The last 20 minutes needed Torosidis to come on as a sub, but Torosidis killed himself with the 70 minutes he played against Finland. We're stuck with Bakakis for now, but he's just more proof that Greece can't afford to play a four-man defense, that we need to convert to three center-backs and wide midfielders. I think it's better to convert someone like Masouras to play as a wide-right midfielder and to drop Bakakis to the bench or altogether. Hopefully Torosidis can help shape Masouras (with the help of his brother) into the player we need in that position.

[Dean97]

Let’s not forget that our midfield is terrible. Also the EPO are at fault for all of this mess. There corruption are killing the team and they don’t care. Money is more important to them than seeing Greece succeed. It’s truly sad and disrespectful.

[Don Giovanni]

The EPO too deserves time and patience. Many on the board know very little about what they're doing and that's why we've seen many of these failures, like hosting matches in a near empty OAKA (part of that blame goes to OSFP) or the hiring of Anastasiadis. Yes, they have proven rather incompetent, but things will not get better simply when others take their place. These problems will get worst if men of good character are not given time to grow into their jobs.

Also the corruption in the EPO has been cleaned up to some extent, hence the lack of competent people who were largely forced out. The problem is more a matter of incompetence and clubs using their influence to tear the national team apart. AEK, OSFP, and PAOK have done more harm the good when it comes to the interests of the NT. This has to stop.

Today I saw a coach wearing dress clothes that didn't look tailored and he was also wearing casual shoes (they looked like converse sneakers). He was clearly nervous today. Van't Schip is an inexperienced manager for this level. If Van't Schip wants to continue coaching Greece, he has to call-up the right players for this level. If he wants to coach Pavlidis and Vrousaj, then he needs to take Goumas' job. We can't just let players like Vrousaj walk into the eleven if the coach wants egos to be set aside. He has to smarten up or he'll lose the faith of players like Manolas and Sokratis, who were clearly skeptical of him since before his hiring, or else he will soon find himself resigning, as too Grammenos.

The coach said we lacked passion. Manolas was screaming the anthem and has played better than I've ever seen him play for Greece. He almost scored a rocket of a goal to kill the game off. We needed a bit more luck today, but alas football can be cruel and we simply need to pick ourselves up again. All is not lost yet. It's time to work harder than ever and all for one. That goes to the players, the clubs, the EPO, the coach, and the supporters (who must remain ever more patient).

[Don Giovanni]

There's a story on to10.gr about how Van't Schip got the job.

https://www.to10.gr/anonymous/720956...e-ton-fan-sip/

Ryan Kapagiannidis, a former PAOK player who has since turned agent to both Prijovic and Pavlidis, introduced Kostas Vrakas to Van't Schip. Vrakas himself has a son who was on the books in PAOK's youth system and has since gone to Napoli to avoid any appearance that his father is partial to PAOK. It was Vrakas who made the initial recommendation of Van't Schip to the EPO.

As for Grammenos, he himself was not in favor of Van't Schip's hiring, but his opinion is no of consequence. The effective "president," they say, is Pericles Laskarakis, a friend of the disgraced Achilleus Beos.

[Reaper]

Wonder how much Vrakas made from the deal..?

[Don Giovanni]

PAOK will probably offer his son a professional contract.

Well it confirms what we all knew, that Grammenos is out of his depth. Sadly, it would appear that more insidious and less savory elements are in a position to pull the strings once more. Not only that, but that PAOK holds to much sway over decisions made by the EPO. AEK and OSFP are not helping matters, but PAOK is beginning to look a lot like the club that is owning this mess. I can't speak badly of Mr. Laskarakis, not knowing much about the man myself, but given the circumstances it's evident the NT is run by amateurs and he has done little to guide the board in the right direction. As for characters like Vrakas, it's evident they should never have been handed the responsibility of finding a new manager. I thought Basinas was on top of that, clearly he was not.

As for Van't Schip, he's not bad manager. He can turn things around as far as our performances go, something he appears to have already done in terms of our defensive organization. But he'll need to bring back more experienced players into the squad and convince them to perform if he plans to remain in charge. The talk I hear of forcing out the players over 30 years of age would be a disaster for us. We are not Germany that produces a litany of new talent every year. And even Germany could do with the return of Mat Hummels right now seeing how badly some of Germany's CBs, like the inexperienced Jonathan Tah, are performing. I would hate to see Sokratis and Torosidis make company with Holebas, who had been alienated by Skibbe due to the favoritism towards Tzavellas. Van't Schip must do everything in his power to avoid a repeat of that mistake. We need Sokratis and Torosidis more than ever.

[Dean97]

With Vant Schipt including Pavlidis and Vrousai can only be a good thing. You can tell he made those selections. The ultimate goal for any young footballer is to play the senior national team. In my opinion we should have included more youth from the beginning of the nations league. Especially in positions we need fixing like CM. Galanopoulos, Androutsos, Charisis, Bouzoukis should all be in the team. Samaris and Kourbelis are not good enough for the national teams midfield. They can’t command it.

Bouchalakis is slightly better than both but isn’t good enough. Pavlidis and Vrousai are good inclusions for down the road. The experienced players are needed like Manolas and Sokratis. Players with talent and playing at the heights level. Torosidis is past it and Mitroglou is very inconsistent. He has confidence issue. Players like Karelis and Gianniotas would be welcome additions to the team and can add something. They both can score. We honestly have to look into the future because what these past 5 years have told me is we can’t make tournament with this bunch and they can’t gel.

Its up to the EPO to not interfere in any of the selections as the coach has stated what needs to be done. Rebuild, add some youth and quality players. Retsos and Donis will be needed. A quality player like Fetfatzidis is needed and when Fortounis gets back we should be on the right track. Also Id take Bouzoukis over Kolovos.

You were here right in saying Koulouris and Masouras can’t do it by themselves. But as Masouras has proven he can do more good than harm as he should a starter for now. We also need Gianniotas. We will add quality on the wing. It’s time to put the team first and not the money.

By the way, what happened to all the money the players declined from the 2014 World Cup? Wasn’t that money supposed to be for the training facilities?

[Don Giovanni]

We need experienced players who compete at the highest levels. Masouras plays in the UCL. Koulouris and Donis play in Ligue 1. Gianniotas, for all his talent, doesn't make the cut. He plays in Cyprus. We need to retain the players who compete at those levels. Guys like Tachtsidis, Donis, and Mitroglou need to be on the team, not Gianniotas.

Pavlidis and Vrousaj should have been playing for the U21 team. They have a potential future with the men's team, but right now they need to graduate through the youth team, like Koulouris and Tsimikas did.

Also the decision to sub Pavlidis on for Fetfatzidis against Liechtenstein was what actually killed us. Once we lost Fetfatzidis, our most experienced and most skillful attacker, we had no offense. Granted, Fetfatzidis had fitness issues, but this was the time to sub on Mitroglou, not Pavlidis. The change in shape to a 4-2-4 left our midfield outnumbered. And without Bouchalakis, we lost any capability we had in the middle to retain and distribute possession to moderate effect (never mind well). At Benfica, Samaris doesn't take on those responsibilities; he leaves better players to distribute the ball. Obviously the coach is not fully aware of our limitations and what options are actually available to us. If he did, Tachtsidis would have been in the team and he, not Zeca, would have played in those last 20 minutes to help Greece find a second goal.

In the press conference, Van't Schip said he didn't want to play defensively in the last ten minutes to keep the score at 1-0. Why did he forget to cancel the substitution of Giannoulis (instead of subbing on Limnios) right after the goal? Clearly that doesn't add up. Van't Schip is not taking any kind of responsibility for the problems we've seen. It can't just be on the players; something has to fall on the coach too. He has to take some blame here.

Van't Schip has to play players who are capable, competing at an appropriate level. If he wants to keep playing U21 guys, then he should be coaching the U21 team. He can't do this against Italy. He won't last if he does.

[Dean97]

I understand where you are coming from but isn’t it as good or better to have young hungry players who have talent. You going to get players who are running and playing with heart. Some of our players seem complacent and also some can’t handle the pressure. At least the younger players they know they have to perform. Look at Panathinaikos last season. The young guys were trying to prove a point.

Should do do the same here. Fortounis and Fetfatzidis can stay. Sokratis and Manolas can stay. Samaris shouldn’t play again. But he is seen in the media and in general a key player. Which he shouldn’t be. Our older players don’t seem to gel. We need a more competent and experienced coach. But I’m willing to see what Vant Schip does with the call ups, probably nothing.

[Dean97]

You might be right Don but I just wanted note another thing. I think I know the reason why our players are not performing for the national team.

Our players play with different types of players for their clubs. Samaris plays at Benfica with talented players around him. Which make him look decent and better. His role is different to the one in the Ethniki.

Masouras and Bouchalakis have good foreigners in Olympiakos and they work with them and again make them look good and they play better because of it. You can say the same for Mitroglou, Donis, Tachtsidis and others.

As soon as our players come together we seem lost and not as effective. Mixed in with players who are average at best to poor. Eg. Bakakis, Samaris and Kolovos. I don’t think the latter is that bad but we have much better for eg. Fetfatzidis and Gianniotas. Samaris dosent have other Benfica midfielders to work with. Masouras and Bouchalakis haven’t got Camara or Guilherme to work with. They’ve got Samaris or Kourbelis instead. Things like that.

Its just the way it is and it happens. There are certain types of characters in the team that don’t help the situation. Samaris is not effective and does not help us. Especially in attack. Mitroglou relies on players to put it on the plate for him instead of doing something extra. Donis relies on his speed which is very good. But not enough. He needs to learn to be more creative and get more assists. Needs more vision in other words.

Tachtsidis is as good as his vision is he lacks other areas. Such defensive positioning and concentration. 2 things needed for an effective 6. He has the pass, the size and vision. Shooting and heading are decent aswell. He can misplace passes too which needs to worked on.

Consistency is a problem and luck. Being injury prone dosent help. Mantalos for instance.

Kourbelis is not good enough on the ball to create things in midfield. We should use him as back up CB if anything. Zeca isn’t as good as people think but he will run for you. Siopis the same. We are lacking an 8 who take control of the game and be the difference. Bouchalakis is supposed to be this but isn’t as effective. I know we lack proper midfielders as we are not a country who produces a lot of them. But whenever we have one coming through or isn’t common to have we should take advantage of that. Same way we should take advantage of having Fetfa on the team.

Clearly EPO have no clue of this and instead are trying to sabotage the team with the lack of knowledge and politics.

What I’m trying to say most of our players lack certain things and are not at the level needed to be successful. I’m afraid to say that we got average footballers with no mental toughness.

Sokratis and Manolas are not leaders. Sokratis tries to be but isn’t. I think it comes down to our players not being able to handle the pressure and most are limited footballers. We can’t create going forward and our finishing isn’t the best. Our fullbacks provide no threat and our CBs are only good at defending. That’s failure written all over it.

Our players have the habit of relying on others to help them get by. Like Pelkas at PAOK. When the national team games come around they think someone is going to help them again. When all of our players are like oh shit I have to this myself and are lost. Our players have a Psychological problem. Also our players are not at a certain level where they need to succeed. That goes for every Greek player. Sokratis, Manolas, Fetfatzidis and Fortounis are exemptions.

[Don Giovanni]

I will disagree that Sokratis and Manolas are not leaders, but yes a big part of the problem is that players are asked to play in roles they are unsuited to play (like Samaris in the Tziolis-role) and we have not found the right balance among the players we have. The biggest issue is we have not allowed players to develop an understanding among themselves in a system that suits their talents and limitations. We keep making to many changes without finding something that actually suits our capabilities. Then there is the lack of belief among players and distrust with management that is preventing the team from finding any rhythm.

[Don Giovanni]

We went through the rebuild process already under Tsanas and where has it gotten us? Skibbe then built a team around the talents of Tzavellas and in the process alienated Holebas. We can't afford to alienate any more players of his caliber, like Donis, Sokratis, and Manolas.

And then under Anstasiadis we had no structure, no organization. He alienated almost all our top players. All the talk of passion and egos belies the fact that we have had coaches who are incapable of working with top players and rely on mediocre or inexperienced players to keep their jobs. This is partly why Greece hasn't been performing to its potential.

Van't Schip, to his credit, has brought back some structure to the team--we actually looked more organized at the back; however, he made a mistake on the offense, relying on players with almost no chemistry and experience for this level. Kolovos, Fetfatzidis, Vrousaj, Koulouris, Masouras, and Pavlidis have never played together enough as a group before these past two games. We basically started on offense from scratch and the results were predictably poor. Obviously a number of more experienced players lack form or fitness, or have been struggling with it for much of the past season (e.g., Mitroglou); however, if Van't Schip thinks giving Vrousaj more playing time is a good idea, then he's the wrong coach for us. As I said before, he should coach the U21 team in that case, not the men's team. Let him take Goumas' or Konstantinidis' job if he wants to do that. If he wants Bouzoukis and Hatzigiovannis in his team, then let him coach Panathinaikos, not Greece.

Our offense against Liechtenstein failed for very simple reasons:

Vrousaj was very poor against Liechtenstein. He couldn't turn his markers. We're talking amateur defenders. Instead we played long balls through Bouchalakis and Samaris the entire first half.

We only looked good when Fetfatzidis ran at opponents. He was our most experienced attacker. But even Fetfatzidis was always going to struggle for us. He has yet to score for Aris this season. In his last game, Aris lost to newly promoted Niki Volos 1-0. He did look threatening and dangerous against Liechtenstein, easily our best attacker, but he was out of shape and his final product suggests to me he's still very much rusty. He has a place on the Greece team, but he has to get back to form and fitness if he intends to keep his place.

Koulouris was forced to drop back to get any touches of the ball. It was his miss-hit shot that resulted in the goal. Only Masouras provided one half decent cross to him that resulted in Koulouris hitting the bar and then later Tsimikas sent in a good cross on, which Koulouris put away, but Tsimikas' lack of composure/quality meant he let the ball that run out of play after a poor first touch and thus the goal was disallowed. A lack of service neutered Koulouris. Our wings were extremely poor. Bakakis in particular was so poor that Fetfatzidis and Sokratis refused to play him the ball.

Masouras did well to score the first, but he never looked threatening in the game beyond that effort and near assist to Koulouris. We needed more from him too. Our last two goalscorers against Liechtenstein (Donis and Fortounis) weren't on the team. Donis for me is a much better player than Masouras and between the two, Masouras should sit on the bench for him.

Panathinaikos is doing a good job rearing in new talent, but those players aren't good enough for the international level yet. Their captain Kourbelis gave away a soft penalty against Finland due to his overzealous defending. He lacked composure in the box due to his inexperience. It's mistake he'll learn from, but that mistake ended Greece's qualification prospects. I like him and think he deserves to be on the team, but he needs guidance from the coach. Our coaching staff know too little about him still and can offer him little guidance until they figure him out. Kolovos was the worst player on the pitch. He gave away possession to Finland more times than I can count. Any attacking moves we made he killed off once the ball landed at his feet. He may not be good enough to play for Greece in the end. These two are the only Panathinaikos players who are mature enough to play for the Greek men's team at this time.

And we need to be realistic. How are the Panathinaikos players who last week lost 3-1 to OFI going to beat Finland? How is a team that couldn't even finish mid-table in Greece last season going to push us into second place and qualify for Euro 2020 or the 2022 World Cup? Many are too young and lack exposure at this level to perform reliably on a consistent basis. They need time to mature and improve. At Panathinaikos they can get that, but on the Greek NT we can't afford them those opportunities right now. They have to mature first and prove themselves at Panathinaikos before they can make the leap to the NT.

[Reaper]

I thnk van ship playing 2 dms was a mistake. We needed goals.

[Don Giovanni]

We're going to play Italy next month and we'll need two DMs plus a CM when we do. The mistake is the constant changes. We started Bouchalakis and Kourbelis against Finland and we finished the match against Liechtenstein with Zeca and Samaris.

We need to identify a core group of players, play a system that suits their strengths and limits their weaknesses, and stick to it in good faith. We can make adjustments and do different things once we're settled and get a run of form. Right now we need regularity and familiarity.