The Greek national football team is called upon to give a premature “Final” at 1a.m. in the morning (Greek time), since the match with Japan is characterized as “do or die”. Santos’ players will want to gain the three valuable points. If they tie with Japan, they will have to get a good result versus the Ivory Coast. If they lose, then the team will be out of the next stage of the tournament.

The national team must focus on their job versus Japan. However, they were required to manage the incident between Giorgos Tzavellas and Yannis Maniatis who came to blows during training. The incident is yet to show if it will adversely affect unity, or bring the team closer together. Apart from a public effort to ease the spirits, the president of the Hellenic Football Federation (ΕΠΟ) met with coach Santos and the whole team for half an hour, behind closed doors, in the hotel where the team resides.

According to reports, George Tzavellas had a tete-a-tete with Fernando Santos and the federation’s president, apologizing for his reaction.

Santos keeps his cards close to his chest for the 11 men he will be putting on the pitch.

The de facto pressure over the result is also shown through another evident feature. Fernando Santos has not “shown” his options for the starting 11, but tried various people out, in order to have them all ready for battle for the decisive game with the Asian team.