Victories highlight the positive elements while defeats highlight the mistakes. This is the law of life and of football. During the historical fight of our national team against Costa Rica, we had both: Mistakes and good elements. We had great moments and dramatic choices. But, we have to see all of them calmed.

Many things went good, but many things went wrong, too.

The first thing was that Santos chose an unsuitable roster. It was obvious that Santos did not want to change many things. He included in the team young players, but then he insisted on two categories of players: older players who were not playing too much this year. It is obvious that neither Karagounis can play at the age of 37 for 120′ nor Katsouranis or Gekas can be the main players of a team that has high expectations.

The second thing was roster management, not just the lack of many talented players to produce good chances, but the philosophy, which is basically defensive. Santos did not work dynamically on this area. He did not give chances to creative players like Fetfazidis or Christodoulopoulos, but only when he was in a difficult position.

Thirdly, he made important tactical errors in the match with Costa Rica. When Costa Rica scored, the team was cut in two having 4 strikers, 4 defenders and only 2 midfielders.

The fourth mistake was that he could not protect the team from extraneous factors; from not being able to deal effectively with the bad situation between Katsouranis and Maniatis to not dealing with Katsouranis after the match with Japan.

Finally, the fifth reason was that many things went wrong for Greece and the biggest one was Mitroglou’s injury. Whether Santos’s choice of including him was good or bad, it was obvious that the good old Mitroglou was absent from the team.