Panathinaikos sacrificed any possibility of more competitiveness against Chelsea because of… Mars, the sad image and the phobic approach towards an opponent who hit the brakes and Alonso’s cloudy mind that shows he can’t turn it around. Written by Kostas Goulis.
Against five or six times more quality and full combat, even the second and third line of rotation can be taken easily … Conference League, nine times out of ten you will lose.
No matter how crowded your field is, no matter how much you bet on the element of surprise and hit the next loose.
The question is always HOW you lose and what choices you make. And Diego Alonso chose on Thursday night (24/10) to lose to dear Chelsea in the worst possible way, saving his name from being written next to the historic Euro lottery, because of the English. .. then went away 0-4 and towards the end his instinct spoke somewhere “Let’s go save what can be saved” by the Panathinaikos players, when they saw that the thing had now escaped.
Yes, no one expected Panathinaikos to come in to beat Chelsea like an octopus “imposes its own terms on the game”as the Uruguayan coach said at the press conference on Wednesday (23/10).
But if you take out the first quarter, where the English entered the game in a calm mood and Panathinaikos stood three times in their area (with a great opportunity in the 2nd minute to open the scoring with Gedvai’s header) for the rest of the game, the picture of the game was … Christians-Lions.
With the “blues” changing positions in defense and playing “tika-taka” with Fernandes and Dewsbury-Hall and whenever they wanted to step on the turbo and achieve a shooting position, against Panathinaikos terribly passive and phobic, without a plan, starting. , middle and end, where the only thing that showed from 20′ on the “You stay as much as you can, so that we do not suffer anything”.
The score was 0-1 at half time, it has nothing to do with the competitiveness of the greens, but with the mentality of Chelsea, who dictated the pace of the game as they wished.
He set up the goal in a poor Panathinaikos defensive move that started with Jedvai’s misguided open control in midfield, he was in complete control and when he decided to change the pace to finish the job early in the second half, he succeeded . three more goals in a quarter of an hour causing endless murmurs, boos and icicles in the stands.
Lowering the morale of the entire team
I argue that it is always how you lose and how you choose to lose that matters. Alonso chose to sacrifice any chance of a more competitive presence for his team by rotating half the team in a game against Chelsea – who can pull you out if he wants even if you have your starters – because of the match with Mars .
Something he admitted, indirectly but not clearly, in his statements at the press conference, defining the championship as his ultimate goal.
And basically nothing was done about what his team presented against Chelsea, because “four more games to go”. Really now?
Because this sounds like an admission and a choice of strategy (and it is) more shocking, even than the backward steps that ALL football players took in terror, whenever they took the ball to their feet and rushed towards the area Panathinaikos Joao Felix, Mudric, Enkuku and Neto.
Yes, the championship is (should be) the ultimate goal of Panathinaikos, but when YOU show in your dressing room that you choose games, you diminish the size of the club itself and the spirit of the whole team.
And the most important thing: you alienate your life even more, filling for the third time in two months the hardest stadium in the country with 60,000 fans, despite the fact that the image of your team was in 90% of its games from. bad to sad.
Decibels of dissent from the platform multiply against what does not even mentally resemble Panathinaikos.
Don’t be surprised that the crowd was calling Ivan Jovanovic’s name for the first time after 0-4.
He has a criterion and he does not forget …
Very…confident of a team that is in 29th place
How can Alonso be so sure that in the next four European games from Juggarden (away), Helsinki (in), New Saints (away) and Dinamo Minsk (in), Panathinaikos will go on the train?
When two of them have already won one (the New Saints had a party with Astana on Thursday) and Panathinaikos are currently in 29th place in the standings, with plenty of goals behind them (which comes in the fear of draws), five places away from the playoff zone even for qualification to the 16 (well for the first eight, we are not talking about it anymore, so to speak).
Panathinaikos’ flirtation with the chastisement is dangerously dangerous. Not because the usual happened and Chelsea overcame the “clover” at home, as it would probably have been 30-31 for the rest of the League Stage teams if the “blues” were against them.
But why was his image inside the stadium from sad to hopeless. Zero intensity, lost positions, midfield and defense that was cut in the middle because … im.
The point is to have goals until then
Also, reducing Sunday’s (27/10) match with Aris as “final” and making the rotation necessary is an official acknowledgment that all that came before and the losses that Panathinaikos had at the start for Europe, for the game with the yellow and black of Thessaloniki to be so limited.
Yes, competitions and titles are not considered in November and December, but in May, as the Uruguayan coach has done several times, but the point is that until May there are still goals for Panathinaikos to claim.
And not looking at others with the… binoculars.
He just can’t seem to turn it around
That’s why I argue that Alonso’s subsequent statements and any arguments he tried to present at the press conference showed even more weakness than the bad image of Panathinaikos in the grass.
And this is, in fact, the biggest PROBLEM. That is, Uruguay looks too confused to manage this situation.
He doesn’t trust you anymore, he doesn’t show you how he can change it.
And most of the time we all know where and how that ends. Not in a “man-eating” or “coaching-eating” spirit, but based on what each person presents with their work and if that shows/gives you perspective.
A currently ignored word in Panathinaikos 2024…