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The 1:0 victory of the Greek nationals in the friendly match with Serbia, which the teams played on the stadium in Belgrade, gave wings to the dreams of Greece for a new soccer quality. Greek media comments of the premiere of the Portuguese coach are very positive, and they called the game a new page in the sport history of the country. Here is a quote from the sports site www.sport.gr: “The friendly 1:0 victory of Greece over Serbia in Belgrade opened a new page in the history of our nationals. Fernando Santos has officially taken the  leadership of the team. He is the successor of Otto Rehhagel after his nine years of successful performance on the bench of our national team.” The site defines the game of the nationals as completely different from the game on the stadiums in South Africa this summer. “The entirely defensive game, which our national team showed against Argentina on the stadiums of South Africa (four defenders in the last match of Rehhagel) is transformed into the 4-3-1-2 scheme, which we saw during the premiere of Santos in Belgrade.”

It became clear still in the first game of the Portuguese that the chief organizer on the field is Sotiris Ninis. Santos put Samaras and Salpigidis before the 20-year-old boy in the first half. In the second Gekas replaced Salpigidis. The German’s defenders in the game were Vyntra, Kyrgiakos (replaced by Avraam Papadopoulos in the second half), Papastathopoulos and Spiropoulos. Sifakis stood at the door.

When Rehhagel took over the nationals 9 years ago the qualification for the finals of the World Championship in 2002 was an impossible goal. Therefore, the German focused on the Europe Championship in 2004. Fernando Santos takes in his hands the 12th positioned team in the FIFA ranking. Now the level is incomparably higher and the ranking on the stadiums in Poland and Ukraine is an implicit goal...

Both coaches have different objectives and different debuts. The main reason lies in the fact that the Portuguese takes the team having pretty good knowledge of Greek soccer. In contrast, Rehhagel has entered into its depths only subsequently. Over time, he chose players and built the game almost entirely on them. Things did not look good when the time for his official debut came on 5.09.2001. Greece fell from Finland with 5:1 in shame ... Rehhagel had a “dead” team that he had to raise. But he had a whole year to do so.

Fernando Santos definitely does not avail the luxury of Rehhagel. There is only a month to the Euro 2012 qualifications, which obliges the Portuguese to rely on the familiar players and change only the system of the game. Unlike his predecessor, however, he showed even in the first game that knows the Greek soccer very well.