Ex-Greece boss Gus Poyet pinpoints exactly what went wrong for England in shock loss… and warns it could happen again
FORMER Greece manager Gus Poyet claims England’s shock loss at Wembley was down to interim boss Lee Carsley’s baffling line-up and all the managerial drama.
The Greeks upset the Three Lions with a 2-1 win last month in the Nations League after a brace by Benfica star Vangelis Pavlidis, despite an brief equaliser by Jude Bellingham, and dedicated the win to team-mate George Baldock just 24 hours after his sudden death.
The two teams meet again on Thursday in the return fixture at Athens’ Olympic Stadium – also known as OAKA – in the first match after Thomas Tuchel was named England’s new full-time manager.
Poyet, 56, suggests it’s a good thing the national team finally know who Gareth Southgate‘s successor is as he believes the uncertainty took a toll on the player’s mentality.
The Chelsea and Tottenham legend also expects Carsley, who will oversee the matches against Greece and Finland before Tuchel takes over in the new year, to name a much more balanced line-up at OAKA.
The ex-Brighton boss suggested Carsley simply tried to accommodate all of his best players, which is almost impossible for any manager to do at international level.
The 50-year-old coach tried out a controversial, ultra-attacking formation that saw Cole Palmer and Anthony Gordon having to start in deeper roles, while Bellingham was placed up front instead of in-form strikers Ollie Watkins and Dominic Solanke.
Poyet told SunSport on behalf of Freebets.com: “The mental side is very, very important. I think there were too many things going around publicly about England and the coaches and which one [will be in charge] and how it’s going to be.
“Everybody saw after that game the FA decided to name Tuchel, which means it [the info] was inside the camp, that feeling. And nobody knew the future of the national team.
“And it’s true that on the pitch, normally, it doesn’t affect the players when you are playing because you are not thinking about anything else. But the previous days, the previous hours and the after hours, it does. Greece put up a magnificent plan from the coach and the players.
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“They understood exactly what they needed to do, and then in key moments of the game they took advantage. And that’s always important. You know, there are little things that need to go for you in certain moments, and they totally served well.
“I think that for whatever reason, the coach in place tried something that most people in football were saying, that it was not possible to play everybody. Going back to my time, when they used to say Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and [Paul] Scholes, they can play together.
“Whatever it was here was the same. Everybody wanted to see everyone in somehow. Apparently that was the correct game to do it, and at the end it was clear that it was not.
“So maybe, you know, sometimes we make decisions as coaches. We believe that playing all your best players, it makes a team. And sometimes it doesn’t, almost all of the time.
“That was one of the biggest mistakes I made in one of my clubs, to try to accommodate all the very good players somehow into the pitch and put in there like a puzzle and it doesn’t work like that.
“You know, a team needs to have some shape, some characteristics, some people who are going to be good at the ball, and some that are going to be good without the ball. And I think that somehow didn’t work for England.”
Poyet believes the loss at Wembley absolutely proves England can lose again in Athens, which would see them missing out on first place in Group 2 and being dealt a severe blow to their 2026 World Cup plans.
The former Sunderland boss knows Greece very well as he managed them for two years and transformed them as he promoted them to League B, only just missing out on Euro 2024 qualification in the play-off final at Georgia, which led to his exit.
‘England know they can lose’
And he is adamant his successor at the helm Ivan Jovanovic has put together a smooth transition that sees his team being much more clinical on the pitch.
Poyet added: “Now they know that they can lose and that’s enough. It’s gonna be a totally different game. I think the first game is always a surprise. This one is going to be different
“For Greece, it’s going to be amazing. I think the progress that we made in two years and the intelligence of Jovanovic now taking that forward with his own style, but without changing too many players, is being proven absolutely right.
“Go back two years and a half when I arrived, and there was seven or eight thousand people at OAKA . Now it’s going to be full.
“It means that group of players are going places, and that shows that it was something right, and that the people got excited. So it’s going to be a great opportunity to see if it’s possible to repeat that magical moment at Wembley.”
Poyet warned England, who saw Trent Alexander-Arnold, Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish, Palmer, Levi Colwill and Aaron Ramsdale pulling out, the main ingredient that could cause another upset is the Greek players’ unity.
Greece unity can cause another upset
The likes of Cardiff’s Manolis Siopis, Newcastle’s Odysseas Vlachodimos, Liverpool’s Kostas Tsimikas, West Ham’s Dinos Mavropanos, captain Tasos Bakasetas and Premier League target Fotis Ioannidis have been playing together for years.
And the game will be taking place in front of a sold out OAKA, filled with passionate Greeks that have fallen back in love with their national team following 10 years of hurt.
Poyet said: “The unity of the group, for sure, 100 per cent, [can lead to an upset] because it’s there and continues to be there.
“I think when you play against a team like England, which is one of the top teams in the world, you need to be practically perfect, no mistakes.
“And you need to be on the day to bring down the difference between the two teams. So you need to be clinical. Greece was clinical at Wembley,
“You need to make sure that everybody is in a high level. You just say, what a big decision for the coach you know, to play Pavlidis or to play Ioannidis [up front] – probably both will play part of the game.
“So there is plenty of things that they need to be decided yet, and it will depend on what the two managers pick and decide how to play this game.”