Greece have nothing to lose against Germany
Reuters - Tuesday 19 June 2012, 13:04
Greece have achieved
their main goal at Euro 2012 by getting past the group stage and
beating Germany in a last-eight clash that has turned minds to
the eurozone crisis would simply be a huge bonus, defender
Kyriakos Papadopoulos said on Tuesday.
The Greeks have no injury problems ahead of Friday's
quarter-final, aside from Papadopoulos's name-sake Avraam, who
has had surgery on a knee injury sustained in the tournament
opener against Poland.
They will be without talismanic playmaker Giorgos
Karagounis, who scored the only goal in a shock 1-0 win over
Russia but is suspended and should be replaced by Grigoris Makos
in midfield.
"Advancing to the quarter-finals was our first target in
these games," Kyriakos Papadopoulos told a news conference at
the team's base outside Warsaw.
"From now on there is nothing for us to lose. Whatever we
achieve from here is going to be huge for us and we will try
very hard to stay in the tournament."
Papadopoulos, who plays for Germany's Schalke 04, said it
was a plus for the Greeks that many of the squad play their club
football in the Bundesliga.
"Of course we're going to study a lot of Germany with our
coach and his team but I'm not going to discuss tactics here,"
he said, singling out Germany striker Mario Gomez as an
excellent player.
"Its important that a lot of the Greek players have played
in the Bundesliga. That gives us an advantage because we already
know how they play."
Team-mate Giorgos Samaras, who plays for Scottish champions
Celtic, laid into the international media in English for making
too much of the politics of the clash with Germany, a country
hated by many Greeks for the imposition of crippling fiscal
targets for its international bailout.
"You cannot compare football to politics. Its a bad thing
for you to start to make stories and compared football and
sports with politics," he said. "Its just a game. We're going to
play and enjoy it because we love it, nothing else."
While the Greeks are increasingly angry at this line of
questioning, however, they have also consistently stressed how
important success at the tournament is for a nation bowing under
the weight of an economic collapse.
"We don't play for ourselves, we don't play for the team, we
play for 11 million people back in Greece who are waiting for a
smile, for a reason to get out in the street and celebrate,"
Samaras said.
"I think we gave them that against Russia. Now we are in the
last eight nations in Europe. We really don't care who we play
from now on."