The Greek National Team officially announced a plan of changes in the structure of the team. The administration believes that these changes will bring much better results in the next years, but at the same time the team keeps some basic rules – principles. One of those rules is the minimum number of matches that a player needs to play in the Total UNI-League in order to participate at the final squad for the EMF EURO, and this is minimum 1/3 of the total number of matches that his team has played – usually 6 matches is the minimum and usually the players have more than 10 – 15 per year anyway.
The technical team will consist of 5 members: Coach (Apostolis Gkaifyllias), Technical Director (the name will be announced soon), Delegation Manager (Stavroula Giannakopoulou), Physio 1 (Thanos Vourdas), Physio 2 (Chris Leonidakis).The existence of a technical director is one important change, since this professional will have advanced duties into assisting the coach and helping the team building and the spirit of the team, while he will have some input in the final choice of players.
The team participates every year in the EMF EURO, European Minifootball Championship, however the players will not be chosen anymore just once in the summer before the Championship. There will be some further events, like training camps or friendly matches that will be taking place every 2-3 months and the technical team will have the chance to work with his players during all year time and to try more players in the trainings. As a result, if one player is once invited, this does not mean that he will be automatically member of the team that will represent the country in the EMF EURO.
Currently, the Greek Association accepted the proposal of the German Association and will participate in training camp / friendly tournament where more countries will take part too and it will last for 4 days. The camp starts in April 4th in Bochum and the 12 players that are invited are the following. Next to the names, the city where each player plays is visible.
Asimakopoulos Thanos – Orpheas (Athens)
Chatziminas George GK (Herakleion)
Drenova Andreas (Athens)
Gkialis Mimis (Thessaloniki)
Gkiatis Vaggelis (Athens)
Karavidas Dimitris (Athens)
Koutsoukos Antonis (Patra)
Lefkaritis Chrysanthos (Thessaloniki)
Mantis Andreas (Athens)
Taramas Raphael (Thessaloniki)
Tzanetos Dionysis (Athens)
Xanthos Paschalis GK (London)
Among the 12 players that are invited, there are 4 new players and 8 players that have already become international since 2013 or 2014 or 2015.