Van ‘t Schip: “Everyone should be ready to play for the national team”
Ahead of the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifier against Armenia in Yerevan, John van ‘t Schip and Michalis Bakakis spoke to the media.
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Greece are aiming to continue riding on the wave of positivity. Last month, the team made a vast improvement under the leadership of Van ‘t Schip, producing a solid performance in Italy before beating Bosnia with some wonderful, free-flowing football which will live long in the memory. On paper, the Greeks would certainly expect to defeat Armenia, but the latter are currently above them in the Group J standings and even claimed a shock 3-2 victory in Athens earlier this year.
Head coach, John van ‘t Schip, spoke about the approach to this game:
Lack of motivation: “There is motivation. Yes, the motivation is not to do with the standings, but we want to show that we can play good football. We must show what we believe in. Positive results can be achieved through this method of working.”
What he knows about Armenia: “We will have to wait and see which players are chosen to play in their starting line-up. We can only control our team. We’ll definitely have respect for our opponents because they can hurt us.”
No Sokratis Papastathopoulos in the squad: “I have said before that I want to see what other players are capable of in these matches. I already know what Sokratis can do. At the moment, we are looking at different players. The team must continue playing in this manner.”
Loss of Henrikh Mkhitaryan for Armenia: “Yes, he’s not here for Armenia, but I don’t want to just focus on one player. All of their players will want to show their new coach what they can do. The Armenians do have high-quality players, but we are focused on our own performance.”
Possible changes to the line-up in comparison to Bosnia game: “As you can see, the team is pretty much the same apart from three changes. However, we still have time to see some new players in action, and Sebastian Vasiliadis is one of them. Everyone should be ready to play for the Greek national team.”
Problems of the past: “We cannot look back at the past, instead we must focus on the present. We played some good football against Bosnia, and there was progress in the performances of players such as Dimitris Limnios, Dimitris Giannoulis, Konstantinos Tsimikas and Petros Mantalos. The same can be said for every player who participated in that match against the Bosnians.”
AEK right-back Michalis Bakakis also spoke at the press-conference in Yerevan:
Lesson dealt in the first match against Armenia in Athens: “We have certainly studied what happened in that game. If we play as the Greek national team tomorrow, we will achieve the desired result.”
Absence of experienced players: “The coach makes the decisions concerning the squad. You saw that in the previous two games, we still played well even without those players you were referring too. The goal for all of us here is to achieve the best possible result.”
Promising performances in October: “As you saw, all of the guys gave 100% on the pitch. We look at the team rather than ourselves as individuals. We played very well against Italy before defeating Bosnia. We are all ready to do our best.”
