The European Deaf Football Championship in Antalya is held in collaboration with the European Deaf Sports Organization (EDSO) and the Turkish Deaf Sports Federation and is a qualifier for the Deaf Summer Olympics to be hosted in Tokyo in 2025.
The National team was drawn in Group B, a group of five teams, from which three will advance to the next phase. In the group, Greece will face Germany and the entire British school, England, Scotland and Wales.
In the previous European Championship hosted in Crete, the National team won the bronze medal, which is also the best place it has taken in the event, while it also counts a fourth place in 1995 in Berlin.
The Greek team consists of 23 footballers: Dimitris Pappas, Lefteris Andreosopoulos, Panagiotis Beltsidis, Dimitris Karambelas, Panagiotis Pavlopoulos, Diamantis Tsianos, Christian Skebi, Fotis Karapiperis, Nikos Ioannidis, Sotiris Michelatos, Spyros Spinoulas, Dimitris Kontogiannis, Tsambikos Roufas, Fotis Trikalitis, Michael Georgiadis, Thodoros-Filippos Pavlikovsky, Argyris Moschopaidis-Tzanidis, Ioannis Galanis, Giorgos Schoinas, Orestis Tsoutis, Stelios Varvarigos, Konstantinos Kalamiotis and Dimitris Tsekouras.
The team is accompanied by the federation coach, Giorgos Karantzas and his partner, Prokopis Karagiannis, while the head of the team is the football technical director of the Federation, Lefteris Minas.
Giorgos Karantzas: “Our goal initially is the eight and we’ll see”
Shortly before the team’s departure for Turkey, the national coach, Giorgos Karantzas, spoke on the EOAK website about the team’s preparation, the new players and its goals: “We had several problems in our preparation with the participation of the players due to the of their professional obligations and this made our work difficult, but it also makes the mission difficult.
We also have an injury, Karabela, from the Champions League for the deaf and it is not sure if he will be ready for the first game against Germany. Some players will be integrated later. Our preparation included daily training sessions and friendlies at the Spata stadium and at the Winners Club stadium.
Finally, we played a friendly against Vouliagmeni. Simply, as I said, not all the players could follow the program and that made it quite difficult for us.”
The federal coach spoke about the three new players at his disposal: “Andreosopoulos, Spinoulas and Kalamiotis are the three players I have for the first time in the team and I hope they do well.”
As for the opponents in the group, Giorgos Karatzas emphasized: “I don’t have a recent picture of Germany. Of the Deaf Olympians we had seen, they were nothing terrible. Simply, Germany is Germany and within two years it may present itself differently. Also, what I do know is that Great Britain has been split up and we now deal with England, Wales and Scotland separately.
We are three groups, three of us go through because we are a group of five teams, the other two groups are of four teams and two go through and the best third to complete the eight.”
Regarding the goal: “Our goal is to qualify first for the eight and then in the knockout process it’s one game and that’s the day, the moment, everything counts.”
The schedule of our national team in the group stage:
Group B (5 teams, 3 advance to the round of 8)
20/5: 17:00 Greece-Germany, Wales-England
22/5: 10:30 England-Greece, Scotland-Wales
23/5: 17:00 Scotland-England, Germany-Wales
25/5: 10:30 Wales-Greece, Germany-Scotland
26/5: 17:00 Greece-Scotland, England-Germany
Source: Sport Fm
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