How did Greece win EURO 2004?

The players were not that bad. Granted they were not top class, but Charisteas was a starter for the Bundesliga champions, Dellas was a rock. Seitaridis was an exciting RB just signed by Porto, the european champions (who just preferred parties than training), and in the core there were many players from PAO, who was really close to reach the CL semi finals a couple of years ago and was beating teams like Arsenal, Juve, Barcelona etc.

It also happened that most of the players were at their peak (late 20s-early 30s) and had no pressure.

It was not just defensive tactics or luck. The players were actually OK.
 
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Teams just failed to come up with a response to their man-marking. Portugal had two goes at it and as I remember they were worse in the final than they were in the opening game. It definitely wasn't jammy or lucky, yeah they were ultra defensive but they were actually quite comfortable in each knock out game.
 
Cup format is not fair and gives no room for regression to the mean/average to kick in as compared to league format. Accordingly, Outliers can happen more frequently in such setting.
 
Avatar said:
Cup format is not fair ...
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Tell me you're jealous of Madrid's 15 CL titles without telling me.

As others mentioned the team wasn't that bad and also there wasn't really another "great European team" at the time. Germany brushed over being shit by having an extremely favourable tournament tree and some good luck in 2002, Spain wasn't a dominant force yet etc.
 
do.omb said:
Tell me you're jealous of Madrid's 15 CL titles without telling me.

As others mentioned the team wasn't that bad and also there wasn't really another "great European team" at the time. Germany brushed over being shit by having an extremely favourable tournament tree and some good luck in 2002, Spain wasn't a dominant force yet etc.
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wow, that's some new level of cynicism!

Real Madrid deserves each and every UCL trophy it won. Got lucky sometimes, but all winning sides of whichever tournament need some luck.

Bet you didn't see that coming, eh?

Anyway, the UCL is more fair 'cause of the home and away format. And you play like 13 matches to win the cup, around double the number of matches played in continental and world cups. Still not as fair as league formats though. No cup format comes close to a tournament where you play 30+ matches over a much longer time. No league win is undeserved.
 
They sacrificed a goat right before the tournament. Rest in peace Achilleas.
 
They had a guy who could deliver corners/ freekicks.. and a few players who could head

That's all I remember:)
 
They relished facing the bigger sides. They lost to Russia in the groups I think
 
Better question, why did they not kick on from the win?
 
SalfordRed18 said:
Better question, why did they not kick on from the win?
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In a way they did... managed to qualify for World Cup and Euro until 2010. Didn't do anything there, but even qualifying for the tournaments was more than they usually managed to do.

And on top, the team 2004 was old. It was the last hooray of a generation that still grew up with old ideas and could revive that experience to stun most attacking teams who were used to modern zonal marking defence etc.
 
stefan92 said:
In a way they did... managed to qualify for World Cup and Euro until 2010. Didn't do anything there, but even qualifying for the tournaments was more than they usually managed to do.

And on top, the team 2004 was old. It was the last hooray of a generation that still grew up with old ideas and could revive that experience to stun most attacking teams who were used to modern zonal marking defence etc.
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I don't think they qualified for the very next world cup in 2006.
 
They made 2012 QF and 2014 R16 (out on penalties) as well, though by then most of the players were different, but the style was still similar. The game against Russia in 2012 was worthy of 2004, smash and grab 1-0 revenge (after being beaten in the last two Euro's by them), with about 30% possession and after weathering over 30 shots.

After 2014 they've been terrible. If i remember rightly the collapse started with a seemingly washed up Ranieri as manager, who then goes on to Leicester.
 
SalfordRed18 said:
I don't think they qualified for the very next world cup in 2006.
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True, they missed that one, but qualified 2010 (which was only the second time in their history that they did that).
 
Defensively they were very impressive and even free-flowing attacking sides like Czech Republic, Spain and Portugal struggled to create much. Very good at set-pieces which made the difference. As others have said, France, Italy, Germany and Netherlands were all in transition from the their late 90s teams, so the depth of quality arguably wasn't as high as other Euro championships.
 
groovyalbert said:
There was something in the water that season.

Porto CL winners, Arsenal unbeaten winners in the Premier League, Valencia La Liga winners, Werder Bremen Bundesliga winners.
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When you put it all together:wenger:
 
Gio said:
As others have said, France, Italy, Germany and Netherlands were all in transition from the their late 90s teams, so the depth of quality arguably wasn't as high as other Euro championships.
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It was a poor period for European national teams who just couldn't get it together. This was already seen at WC 2002 where all the big European teams except Germany had a horrible tournament, and Netherlands didn't even qualify.

They just continued to this poor form into Euro 2004.

Pretty much everyone except Czech Republic looked bad at that tournament. England and Portugal had some flashes and they face each other in the quarters. Spain, Italy and Germany were knocked out in the group stage.

groovyalbert said:
There was something in the water that season.

Porto CL winners, Arsenal unbeaten winners in the Premier League, Valencia La Liga winners, Werder Bremen Bundesliga winners.
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The entire 2001-2005 period were transitional years in European football, that's why you saw many upsets both in international and club football.

The big teams simply weren't that strong at the time. Real Madrid entered their galactico period where they lacked balance, United was in transition, Barca and Inter were in their dark years and Bayern had an off-season every second year. Juve and Milan were the only relatively consistent big teams, but they also had their blunders in the CL.

This presented an opportunity for teams like Valencia, Deportivo, Arsenal, Porto and Liverpool to win titles and have good runs in the CL.

In 2006 things got back in order though. The big European national teams performed as expected on the WC and big clubs started to dominate the CL again.
 
I don't think there was that much difference in quality at any of the 16 team Euro tournaments. Maybe 96 was a notch better than the rest because the EE teams were all quite strong on paper, whereas by the '00s, only a 1-2 per tournament looked capable of doing anything.
 
They were lucky to survive the match against Czech Rep.
But defensively they were very organized and their starting 11 was very balanced in terms that the players had enough quality to be part of top leagues squads.
Karagounis was also very efective in set pieces.
 
led_scholes said:
The players were not that bad. Granted they were not top class, but Charisteas was a starter for the Bundesliga champions, Dellas was a rock. Seitaridis was an exciting RB just signed by Porto, the european champions (who just preferred parties than training), and in the core there were many players from PAO, who was really close to reach the CL semi finals a couple of years ago and was beating teams like Arsenal, Juve, Barcelona etc.

It also happened that most of the players were at their peak (late 20s-early 30s) and had no pressure.

It was not just defensive tactics or luck. The players were actually OK.
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Swiss reminded me a bit of Greece in this tournament, not in style as they're more exciting to watch but good mix of players all in good form, Xhaka coming off an amazing club season and the three starters for Bologna who had a great season in Serie A.

Even then though Greece hadn't qualified for a major tournament from 1994 up to the Euros that summer whereas Swiss are pretty much at every tournament in last 20 years so a mid ranking team can't be compared to Greece.

It would genuinely be Scotland winning this Euros as a comparable achievement and they were lightyears off that to put it mildly.
 
SalfordRed18 said:
Better question, why did they not kick on from the win?
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They sort of did. Qualified for all of Euro 2008, World cup 2010 (when they beat Nigeria I think), Euro 2012 (at this point Fernando Santos is in and somehow gets them out of the group stages) and then they qualified for 2014 and got through the group ahead of Ivory Coast and Japan which was a really good achievement.

Considering how few qualifications they had up to 2004 it was a golden decade even if their style of player remained as conservative as you could get compared to other mid tier teams.

Haven't qualified for anything since 2014 though so need to find another Rehhagel.
 
They had a game plan for every single game and chocked the live out of them. Was a very novel thing at that time.
 
André Dominguez said:
They were lucky to survive the match against Czech Rep.
But defensively they were very organized and their starting 11 was very balanced in terms that the players had enough quality to be part of top leagues squads.
Karagounis was also very efective in set pieces.
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Nedved getting injured in the first half was crucial. The Czechs were the best team in the tournament for me.
 
Still baffled that we didnt win the tournament. Kinda sucks to be a Czech rep. and United fan the last 14 years.
 
They were a really solid unit, incredible hard to break down, and they just also happened to carry a bit of luck along the way.
 
FootballHQ said:
They should've played Nuno Gomes more in those times, he scored the crucial winner v Spain in the groups but was reserve to Pauleta who tried hard but it never seemed to happen for him in major tournaments bar scoring a hat trick in a group game IIRC.

Not sure if Pauleta ever scored a tournament knock out goal for Portugal in a major tournament.
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I can't recall but didn't Gomes have some pace as well?
 
KeanoMagicHat said:
Slovakia were one minute away from beating England in a similar way that Greece won all their 3 matches in the knockouts. Imagine that game 3 times and it’s somewhere close. Slovakia also beat Belgium in the group stages too. Some luck, good defending, taking your chances. And teams they played underperforming. France had an unbelievable team in that tournament but never really got going at all.
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Was this the Swiss blueprint against Spain in 2010?
 
Demyanenko_square_jaw said:
I don't think there was that much difference in quality at any of the 16 team Euro tournaments. Maybe 96 was a notch better than the rest because the EE teams were all quite strong on paper, whereas by the '00s, only a 1-2 per tournament looked capable of doing anything.
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That could be that those 1-2 sides were just that much better than the field that it made it appear weaker.
 
MrMarcello said:
That could be that those 1-2 sides were just that much better than the field that it made it appear weaker.
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I don't think so; there was a genuine decline in talent and organisation in lots of these countries. At Euro 96, going into the tournament, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Croatia, and the Czech Republic were all teams that, while they all certainly had various flaws, also had some real class in their squads and potential to do well.


After that, there were some good teams in each of the other 16 team tournaments, but always an obvious weak link or some very workmanlike sides that didn't have much potential to cause upsets.
 
Robertd0803 said:
A perfect storm.

They were incredibly well drilled and rock solid in defence and Portugal notably couldnt figure it out.

2004 wasnt a great tournament for the "big teams" (even Portugal werent fancied to make the final) Germany, Spain and Italy all went out in the group stages and England fell apart after Rooneys injury in the knockouts. Remember the controversary over Italys elimination? France were pretty uninspiring and should have lost the opening game to England as well and other than a Henry miss late on never really troubled Greece in the QF.

The silver goal against Czech Rep was probably the moment to be honest that you knew they were going to win.
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@devilish had the best meltdown I've seen in all my years on the internet.
 
Sat ridiculously deep, great in game management and clearing the ball in the air. They were lucky bstrds, as I said to my Greek uncle.
 
Gio said:
Nedved getting injured in the first half was crucial. The Czechs were the best team in the tournament for me.
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They were clearly the best team of Euro 2004, playing amazing attacking football.
But yes, Smicer did not offer the same ball carrying quality that is necessary to help break deep defending teams. Nedved was one of the best all-round midfielders I've seen play.
 
Morpheus 7 said:
Sat ridiculously deep, great in game management and clearing the ball in the air. They were lucky bstrds, as I said to my Greek uncle.
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They actually played surprisingly better in the final where Portugal barely created anything.
On the group stage game against them, they were actually lucky, they could had easily lost that match.
 
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