SALPIGIDIS BLOW

The Greece national team manager Fernando Santos has said that the absence of the striker Dimitris Salpigidis for the first two matches of the World Cup qualifying campaign will be a major blow. Greece depend a lot on the goals from Dimitris Salpigidis in recent seasons. They will be without the 31-year-old striker after he fractured his toe while playing in the league game for his club PAOK Thessaloniki. The striker proved his importance to the national team after scoring two goals in the Euro 2012. This is extremely impressive considering that the entire Greece team managed only five goals during the whole of the Euro 2012.

Even though Greece have relatively easy fixtures on paper in the first two matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying stage, Fernando Santos reckons that the team could have certainly done with the presence of Dimitris Salpigidis. This will be playing against Latvia and Lithuania in the first two matches. The real test for the team will be coming in the latter stages where they will face Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republic of Ireland. Fernando Santos has decided to give Panagiotis Glykos his first call-up to the national team.

“Missing Salpigidis is a big blow to the team. The (first two) games are all about concentration and being serious on the pitch. We have to the level of concentration that will ended up achieving at the European Championship,” Santos said. “This is a really big day in my career. It was always a dream to play for Greece, and now it’s happening,” said Glykos after receiving his first call-up to the national team. The 26-year-old has been impressive for the club team this season and is determined to prove that selecting him for these two matches was the right decision by the manager Fernando Santos.