COUNTDOWN

'King Otto' reigns in Greece

November 26 2009 at 10:10PM

By Christine Pirovolakis

Athens - German coach Otto Rehhagel is enjoying proving his sceptics wrong after Greece scored a 1-0 win in the Ukraine on November 18, sending them through to the 2010 World Cup finals.

Some observers had begun to question the 71-year-old's ability to stir the 2004 European Champions to the World Cup after failing to do so for the 2006 World Cup Germany.

It is only the second time-ever that Greece have qualified for a World Cup final, coming 16 years after their first appearance in the United States in 1994 - when they lost all three group matches without scoring and conceding 10 goals.
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"This is a very important moment for Greek football. It's simply fantastic," said Angelos Charisteas, the man who scored the winner in the final against Portugal at Euro 2004.

"We played very well throughout the game against Ukraine, especially in the first half, we took the lead thanks to a beautiful goals from Dimitris Salpigidis and then we held them comfortably, I thought."

Indeed, many say that the failure of the team to qualify for the 2010 finals in South Africa would most likely have spelled the end of Rehhagel's eight-year run as Greece's coach who managed to pull the national team out of relative obscurity.

Qualification for the finals of the World Cup was the missing piece in Rehhagel's five decades of involvement in the game, having never coached or played at the highest level.

The German coach was under mounting pressure following Greece's second-place group finish after losing both matches against Switzerland to miss out on an automatic place in South Africa.

He is enjoying showing them that their fears were unfounded.

Often under attack by the Greek media for his insistence on using ageing players, the former Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich coach is under pressure to adopt a more attacking stance with a smaller poll of players.

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