Dimatos: “This year’s performance of the Greek teams is being discussed at UEFA”

This year’s performance of our teams in the European events, he comments Andreas Dimatos in his post. The well-known journalist, who at regular intervals analyzes the UEFA score, praises our four representatives pointing out that the… achievements have constituted them topic of discussion in the offices of the European Federation.

In fact, he argues that if the good results continue then it is possible that our country will is in the TOP-15 of the overall rating of the last five years.

Analytically:

And we have reached the point where even in the corridors of the UEFA offices in Nyon, this year’s performance – until today – of the four Greek teams in the European competitions is being discussed!

And it is perfectly reasonable for this to happen when Greece, 41st in last year’s ranking, behind even the Faroe Islands, is in 5th place in this year’s ranking, after the first two matches in the group phase! Behind Turkey who figure in first place (with the amazing performance of their teams’ 23 wins in 27 European matches!), Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands…

And if Jens Jonsson had managed last night to… blow up New Philadelphia by making it 2-1 against Ajax, our country would have climbed to 4th place in this year’s standings, surpassing even the Dutch…

What does all this mean? A lot and nothing… It is still early for final assessments about where Greece will find itself 19th – still – in the overall UEFA 5-year standings. It is still early for the basic prediction of whether he will manage to catch up to the top-15 at the end of the season.

With a season like this, the task would be easy, if we didn’t have to cover such big differences from the countries above us, but there are reasonable hopes if we continue with the same average concentration of points in the four “Greek” matches of each matchday!

And a little lower, however, if our teams then move from the 1,200 and 1,000 points tally of the first two games, in the context of one win, one loss and two draws in the next four games, then in mid-December we will have secured the top Greek season in the current 5 years and we will set a bow for the top performance of Greek teams in Europe in the 21st century, after 11,250 points in 2001-2!

In this case, and with the possibility that the quadruple Greek representation will continue after December, everything will be open.

Until then we can enjoy three of our four teams at the top of their groups, the very good qualification conditions for all four (either in Europa or the Conference League), PAOK leading with a contribution of 35% of the Greek points until today and AEK with Panathinaikos have returned strongly to the European scene and have already covered the bonus of the four points they lost by not qualifying for the Champions League groups!

We are only hurt by some lost points, like yesterday’s of Olympiakos in Serbia, but the red and whites (who could well have a better collection of points in their first two matches) can now with relative safety and with a victory in Karaiskakis and put the yesterday’s opponent from the bottom of the standings (a key condition to continue in Europe) and then… referee!