Greece’s manager, Fernando Santos is one of the happiest people on earth. His changes in the team’s line up, as well as the three substitutions he made, helped Greece to produce another great upset in soccer history. The 60-year-old Portuguese spoke in a press conference about Greece’s success to advance to last 16 of the World Cup, as well as the next game against Costa Rica on Sunday.
“I am delighted first of all that we bring joy to the Greek people,” said Santos. “We have time to think about the match with Costa Rica. We will go back to our base, think about it and study our opponents. We have to pay a lot of attention to this game, they came out top in the ‘Group of Death’ (against England, Italy and Uruguay). As a result we cannot allow ourselves to underestimate them.”
The game comes the day before Santos’ contract expires and Italian Claudio Ranieri is the favorite to replace him on the Greek bench.
Santos, who has had extensive experience as a club coach in Greece (AEK of Athens, Panathinaikos FC and PAOK of Salonica) before replacing Otto Rehhagel in 2010, is not very amused by the continuing belief that Greece only knows how to defend and hit people with the odd goal.
“I can only laugh as it is a joke. In football one attacks and one defends. We know how to defend well and we are very good on the counter-attack.”
“This big success belongs to the players. I’m sure none of them slept. Today they will rest and relax”, the Portuguese coach said. “We have already started to study the next game against Costa Rica because if we want to continue writing history we should play as we played in the last two games. Costa Rica is a very strong opponent; everybody knows that. We are experiencing a very important moment in time and we must be very careful.”
Next game for Greece is on Sunday against Costa Rica. As always, you will be able to follow it live on Greek Reporter.
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