“Ice cube” with the function of Rebotso and Alonso in Panathinaikos who will soon be on the pitch

Let’s start a little bit… upside down today and not from the competition, although it was a friendly day for Panathinaikos. And I don’t think there is a friend of Panathinaikos who did not feel “numb” (small or big) when it leaked on Wednesday afternoon (3/7) that the Greens’ choice for the left position was, after all, the return of the Portuguese Pedro Repozzo.

Logical, very logical, because it is true that in the case of Dimitris Giannoulis, but also the amount of offer made by the “Greens” for the Greek international full-back, the bar for a player who would come to the left side of the defense, was rising very high. Same expectation for the next match where Giannoulis chose to wait outside and the possibility of going to Stuttgart or Ipswich or in any case to a league much better than the Greek one.

In this regard, the choice made with the imminent acquisition of Rebozzo (his transfer in the next 24 hours) has raised a lot of “dust” and a lot of talk, about whether a full-back can really do the… . difference on the left side of Panathinaikos. Well, one should not rush or prejudge a situation, the field has always been and will always be the “judge” of everything, but when you say as an organization that you want to do 3-4-5 moves it will increase the quality indicators of your potential, to be more competitive against the rest of the “big guys”, you have to support it.

With options that will really increase your chances in this area and will not be a “lottery”, which you cannot determine in advance if you will “get money” or if you will finally put it in the… drawer. I hope the Portuguese will leave… from him to Panathinaikos and shut up (with his first signing). For Diego Alonso to give “approval” to the choice of Yiannis Papadimitriou, he obviously “saw” something more in relation to all of them (us)… from the outside and since he believes that the plan suits his philosophy and his “practice” of football (for now) any talk of the rest is superfluous… the field will “tell” the truth, along with duration and substance.

The job isn’t even 10% yet.

Now let’s go to the competition. Today’s draw (3/7) 0-0 with Paphos was exactly what Alonso wanted, to see both the good and the bad in a job that started two and a half weeks ago and is in full swing. And of course it has not even reached 10% yet. On the one hand, because everyone’s legs are currently very “heavy” from the pace and intensity of the training of the Uruguayan and his partners, and on the other hand, because more than half of the “main team” is missing from the lineup. And the plan.

In order not to exaggerate and not to draw wild conclusions, Panathinaikos is currently being built piece by piece in Austria without its main striker (Ioannidis), without its main 8 (Shirin), without the other midfielder he brought in to change his team… Life in the pivot (Maksimovic), without its second striker (Sporar), without another left back (Mladenovic) and with Bakasetas, Baldock who has not yet entered the matches (Bakasetas has nothing to worry about, he has properly protected his leg after the discomfort in the quadriceps).

It will be “built” in different phases.

Panathinaikos will be “built” this summer in different stages as the pieces of the puzzle come one by one along the way and it is clear that patience is needed. The order of creation/implementation and production of more stages and the way the whole team develops, through the foundations of Alonso.

What seems certain is that the (very) hard work he is doing in Austria – and will do later in Athens as well – will see Alonso and his team take to the field very soon.

Panathinaikos is changing… Day by day it is becoming a team that presses high, high and coordinated up the pitch and with time it will do so more and more automatically. It plays faster, more direct and more vertically.

Stages of football… Alonso

Even in the weak phases that the Greens played with very “heavy” legs against Paphos (who play their first official match against Elfborg in 8 days, in the first qualifiers for the Europa League), the picture was… Alonso’s football. At the Jeremyjev crossbar in the 33rd minute, the “clover” players quickly recovered the ball with the “trap”, Kotsiras passed it to Mancini inside the area, he turned towards the Swede and executed it immediately. Even if he did not enter. In the 81st minute, the phase in which Tsukai dribbles and moves again comes from pressure and sneaking up. That is what matters in such a friendly summer. Seeing what you work on every day, even in installments, go out onto the grass…