Panathinaikos believes it is putting obstacles in the way of its next coach – Vassilis Samprakos

Vassilis Samprakos writes about the “brakes” applied by the Panathinaikos management, which has already gone far ahead in shaping the new roster without having a coach.

Information recorded by Nikos Athanasiou’s report regarding the readiness of the Panathinaikos management to wait for the appointment of the new coach in order to draw his attention to the cases of Dragovski and Kotsiras so that he would be the one to decide whether or not they are football players. Compatible with the game model This is perhaps the most encouraging information recently recorded in the Panathinaikos report.

Vassilis Samprakos talks about what Panathinaikos has done in the 2023-24 season

This information creates a feeling that the Panathinaikos management, specifically Giannis Alvozos, has learned a lesson from the great tragedy of the season that ended. About halfway through the season, Panathinaikos decided not only to change their coach, but to scrap their entire idea of ​​the football they wanted to play. After two and a half years of Panathinaikos making transfers based on Ivan Jovanovic’s idea of ​​the game, last December, he not only replaced the coach – he scrapped that idea of ​​the game as he appointed a coach, Fatih Terim, who did not have the same principles of a coach. the game. In other words, in the middle of the season, he gave his team to someone who did not find on the roster the characteristics he was looking for in order to bring his idea of ​​the game to the field. Thus reducing his momentum to obtain the title.

Today, Panathinaikos has already completed three transfers: Nemanja Maksimovic, George Baldock and Tin Jedvay. In other words, he has already made crucial decisions without his coach’s involvement. If the three had become five, Panathinaikos would have already gone further and would have put its coach in the uncomfortable position of either working with several footballers who do not suit him or having to change his ideas about the game in order to adapt to the characteristics of the footballers he finds.

In fact, Panathinaikos is in the most difficult position among the teams that will start the new season with the aim of winning the championship, because it is the only one that will continue with a new coach in the 2024-25 season. If, instead of making his new coach’s life easy, he makes it more difficult by building an advanced roster before hiring him, he will increase the difficulty factor of his job even more. Whoever he is, whatever his experience.

But the logical order of things is different: it is the club that first decides the concept of the game, that is, the sporting identity of the team. Based on this identity, he finds the next trainer and also the drunk trainer, because this is the only way to limit the possibility of obtaining Terim again. Then, when he finds a coach, he allows him to establish the characteristics he needs to create a team that expresses his ideas on the field, and based on these characteristics he makes changes to the roster. With three transfer deals closed and two deals almost completed, Panathinaikos is starting to take a big risk by going down the wrong path again.