Good news from football field. News headlines report that Reigning European champions Greece could not find the net as they finished their warm-up matches for Euro 2008 against Armenia on Sunday evening. It was the last friendly for Greece ahead of Euro-2008. A pretty dismal result for Greece (0:0). Not bad at all for Armenia.
Unfortunately, I did not watch the match, but reports vary in their assessment of the game. The AP mentions that The Greeks dominated for large spells of the game but rarely posed a threat to Armenia goalkeeper Gevorg Kasparov. IA Regnum considers the game as equal, or even with more advantages from the Armenian side.
Either Greeks are not in a proper form, or Armenians are in a good form, or both. Even though Armenia did not pass through to the final leg of Euro 2008, this sort of matches are important for keeping fit and give me a hope that in coming World Cup qualifying football matches, the first one to be against Turkey in Yerevan on 6 September we may well witness a good football. I really hope so and look forward to it. Draws with champions are not bad, but Armenian football team has to get into habit of winning too.
*source of photo - Goal.com
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3 comments:
I watched it online on UEFA website and can confirm it was more of an even contest,where none of the sides really troubled goalkeepers too much. As one Armenian footballer told me, when they don't worry too much they play well.
The lack of a descent attacking player is pretty obvious though and the Brasilian Marco recently incorporated into Armenian sqaud is not an answer to our forward problems. Manucharyan is injured, as usual, his best contribution being the chat he had with Angelos Charisteas, a former Ajax player. Artavazd Karamyan's absence was also noticable. I think him and his brother should be banned from the squad if the reason for Artavazd not to turn up was Arman not being invited.
All together not a bad result, but we need to be better to beat Turkey.
I watched the match as well and agree that the team lacks in good finishing and taking advantage of the chances they get in the opponents end. That said, Armenia did get the better chances. It is encouraging to see such effort against a team like Greece and it was similar effort to last years matches against the likes of Portugal, Poland & Serbia. But just as in a couple of those games, we end up with forwards who get confused when the ball is at their foot and miss the chance (i.e. Ara Hakobyan). I agree mostly with anonymous but I think the addition of Marcos added so playmaker ability. It would have been interesting to have seen him with Art Karamyan and Manucharyan.
Thank God there have been no cries to boycott the Armenian football team the way some wanted to boycott Sirusho. Congrats to the Armenian side for another good result.
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