AEK Slip to 6th; International Action Returns

Making Kyrgiakos captain was not enough to limit the damage when playing the red team away, so now we’ve slipped to sixth.  We’ll have to wait another week to move back up though, since World Cup 2010 qualifiers return this weekend.

Speaking of which, former AEK star Lyberopoulos is trying to rally the fans behind the national team by reminding us that the match again Moldova Saturday will be tough.  Coming off our bruising humiliation this past summer at Euro 2008, this seems like a much more sober approach to the match and the state of Greek soccer than UEFA’s latest puff piece.  UEFA claims Greece are the only country to have won both of their opening qualifiers and that the squad seems recovered from the humiliation of Euro 2008.

Look, we’ve got a decent squad, not question.  But our first two matches were against Luxembourg and Latvia for goodness sake.  I’m quite sure no other country had two such easy fixtures for their first matches.  It proves nothing then.  Worse, hype articles like this one obscure the fact that we need Otto to make some serious changes to the squad before the actual World Cup.  As Amanatides stated after Euro 2008, we need to play faster, more attacking-oriented football.  To do this, we need to call up more of the youngsters, like Ninis and Papastathopoulos, and offload some of the older statesmen who have served their country well but whose bodies are breaking down and are in no shape for a major international tournament against the world’s finest players.

Anyway, if our match against Moldova tomorrow is not being shown in your area, you can watch it here: http://www.videosport.com/qualifiers2010/tarifs.php?s5muid=3398