Greece's long buried attacking flair finally emerges (Feature)

By Peter Mayer Jun 17, 2010, 23:43 GMT

Bloemfontein, South Africa - The record will show that Greece scored their first-ever World Cup victory and their first-ever World Cup goals when they beat Nigeria on Thursday in Bloemfontein.

But there was a bigger surprise sprung by coach Otto Rehhagel's men at the Free State Stadium: for most of the game, the Greeks were actually the team doing most of the attacking.

It did take a combination of stick and carrot, though, before they got going.

'We had to make sure not to concede a goal in the first half hour, and instead we did,' Rehhagel said in the post-match press conference.

Greece's German coach was referring to the soft, 16th-minute Nigerian strike scored directly from a fairly innocuous-looking Kalu Unche free-kick.

This meant that defeat and possible first-round elimination was a real prospect facing Greece, who in their Group B opening 2-0 defeat had conceded a goal to South Korea within seven minutes of the start of each half.

But even that was not enough for the Greeks to be goaded on forward in search of an equaliser.

'We were one goal down, and the team needed a lot of time to recover,' Rehaggel offered by way of explanation for Greece's hesitance to break out of defence.

In the 33rd minute, Colombian referee Oscar Ruiz showed Sani Kaita a straight red card after the Nigerian midfielder had aimed a kick at Greek defender Vassilis Torosidis.

'We were one man up, but there are many games were you still don't win even with that advantage,' Rehhagel said.

Still, when Kaita was sent off, Greece suddenly discovered a penchant for attack that ultimately paid off.

On the stroke of half-time, Dimitrios Salpingidis found the net on a shot deflected off Lukman Haruna past his own keeper, Vincent Enyeama.

With just less than 20 minutes remaining, Torodisis tapped in the winner after Enyeama spilled a swerving Alexandros Tziolis effort on goal.

Greece could have easily added a third but for the heroics displayed by Enyeama, the eventual Man of the Match.

On either side of his blunder, the Nigerian keeper displayed the same shot-stopping skills against Greece that had prevented Argentina from scoring more than their solitary winner on Saturday against the West Africans.

Rehaggel treated his side's pulsating performance against Nigeria as vindication of his often-made claim that he instills his charges with more than just an ability for stifling their opponents' game.

Adjectives like 'rock-hard' or 'granite-like' have become commonplace in describing Greece's defensive style of play during Rehhagel's nine years in charge.

Over that time, 'boring' has all too often described matches involving his team, even when in 2004 he led them to a shock European Championship victory.

But in Bloemfontein, Rehhagel said that Greece had revealed its true colours: 'It was important that we could play our own game today. The team gave everything and showed how important the victory was for us. Now we have to finish the job against Argentina.'