To validate its presence in the finals, it will need a second victory, next Tuesday (26/3, 19:00) in Tbilisi against the host Georgia.
Focusing on the game against the Kazakhs, what is obvious from reading the score alone is that this is one of the biggest victories of the representative group.
In fact, it is the biggest of all time in a play-off, play-off or knockout match, as the rest were either friendlies or the qualifying phase of the European Championship and were as follows:
- 25.11.1949 (friendly) Greece – Syria 8-0
- 11.10.1978 (prev. EURO) Greece – Finland 8-1
- 07.12.1939 (Balkan) Greece – Bulgaria 6-1
- 10.10.1990 (friendly) Greece – Egypt 6-1
- 15.11.1995 (prev. EURO) Greece – Faroe Islands 5-0
- 17.11.2007 (prev. EURO) Greece – Malta 5-0
- 10.09.2023 (prev. EURO) Greece – Gibraltar 5-0
- 21.03.2024 (prev. EURO) Greece – Kazakhstan 5-0
In the match at the OPAP Arena, Gustavo Poget’s team finished with the victory and qualification from the first half, during which they scored four goals. Something similar had happened since September 6, 2016 in Gibraltar, when the final 4-1 had been formed in the first 45 minutes (World Cup qualifiers)
The last time this happened at home was on November 10, 2001, when Greece defeated Estonia 4-2 in a friendly match (4-1 at half time), in their last game at “Nikos Goumas”, the old home of AEK.
The best half in the history of the national team remains the one in October 1978, when in the final 8-1 against Finland they led 5-0 at half-time. Consequently, yesterday’s 45 minutes is the second best of all time but also the first in which the four goals were scored by the same number of players (Bakasetas, Pelkas, Ioannidis, Kourbelis).
Tasos Bakasetas, who opened the scoring in the 8th minute with a penalty, reached 14 goals with the national team shirt and overtook Giorgos Sideris in 10th place among all-time scorers. The Panathinaikos international has achieved 9 of them within 21 months, from June 2022 until yesterday.
He also scored his sixth penalty goal, something that only Nikos Anastopoulos has managed to achieve, i.e. six penalty goals. Bakasetas has performed seven, as well as Anastopoulos and the rest of the top five.
Analytically:
- Nikos Anastopoulos 6 (out of 7)
- Tasos Bakasetas 6 (out of 7)
- Vassilis Tsiartas 5 (out of 7)
- Angelos Basinas 5 (out of 7)
- Dimitris Saravakos 4 (out of 7)
Dimitris Pelkas followed in the 15th minute, showing stability and duration, as in his last eight games he has three goals, four assists and a won penalty, while Giorgos Masouras had two assists, as many as he had in his 39 previous appearances.
However, the 2-0 in the 15th minute is not the fastest 2-0 in the history of the national team, since in 2001 and in the friendly against Estonia the first two goals (2-0) were scored in the first 9 minutes, with Demi as the scorer Nikolaidis.
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