Greece may have failed to qualify for the Euro 2016, but the team has been placing a lot of hope on the upcoming World Cup qualifiers for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
However, they suffered a major setback in the preparation for the qualification campaign after suffering a 1-0 loss against Australia. This was the second consecutive friendly defeat for Greece after their 3-2 loss against Iceland towards the end of March. This latest defeat has raised a lot of questions about the ability of Greece to perform in the qualification campaign.
The team certainly has to learn a lot and dramatically improve their performances, according to manager Michael Skibbe. Greece have an opportunity to recover quickly from this defeat, as they face the same opposition within a few days.Skibbe says that if Greece managed to wake up from the loss, they stand a good chance to get a positive result in the friendly at the Etihad stadium in Melbourne. Greece will certainly have a lot of support during the game since Melbourne has one of the largest Greek speaking communities outside the country itself. A population of around 150,000 people from Melbourne associate themselves with Greece due to their ancestry. Even Australian national team boss Ange Postecoglou was born in the European nation.
“We have to wake up earlier. We are trying to do better.I think in the first half we made too many mistakes, not just that the Australian team played well, they played well because we were doing so many mistakes. We spoke about this. We know that we have to fight for 90 minutes and the same pressure we got (in Sydney) we know there will be the same in Melbourne, so we have to stand up again,” said the manager after the loss.