Greece, another Trojan horse

ThisDrinkingLife and The World Cup: Greece

They always amaze, the Greeks. They seem to regularly qualify these days for either a world cup or European championships, with no one giving them much hope and yet they tend to do not particularly bad. Yet the bookies and most pundits still don’t rate them. This surprises me as Greece have done as much in recent major championships as say England, Portugal or Belgium. I think at 6/1 to win this group, that’s not a bad bet!

I’m not expecting Greece to win the world cup, but I don’t like the way people always tend to underrate them. I do secretly admire the way they play football and always overachieve. They are a well coached team who play to the best of their strengths. Even though they are a relatively old squad, that can count for invaluable experience, they know each others game plan inside out. You cant train that, its competitive experience that should make them do well again. They are also lucky enough to be in a relatively easy enough group and have the experience and know how to get out of this group without too much bother, or at least they should do.

Key man is Giorgos Samaras who seems to spend more time on the ground than he does off it, but he is a brilliant player at holding the ball up and a great target man. Dismiss him at your peril. He might not score more than he should but his teammates definitely feed off his delicate passes.

I predict that Greece, with their strong team spirit, will come out of this group, maybe as leaders, and that will be as much as they will do in this world cup, as much as they have ever done before in a world cup previously. I think they should be happy enough with that.