Greek Statues

Russia 1 – 0 Greece

I know that everyone is blasting Greek keeper Antonis Nikopolidis for his inexcusable decision to vacate the net going for a cross, a lapse in judgment that led to the easiest goal Russia’s Konstantin Zurianov will ever score. I’m not trying to justify the gray-haired goalie’s senior moment, which carried him ten yards outside his post and left him flailing wildly at a pass he had no chance of stopping, but some of the blame has to fall on the once-impenetrable Greek defense.

As the initial cross drifted wide and Nikopolidis went chasing after it, five defenders stood absolutely motionless as Zurianov camped in front of a wide open net. Nobody made any attempt at marking, much less at covering the gaping mouth of the goal. Compare this to a moment in the day’s first game in which two Swedish defenders got in front of a shot as their keeper Andreas Isaksson lay on the ground, probably trying to remember his own name after taking a Spanish knee to the face.

Perhaps Greece’s defenders were as dumbfounded as everybody else by Nikopolidis’s insane dash, but that doesn’t excuse their failure to react until it was far too late. It is a fullback’s job to cover for a goalie who has left his line, ill-advised or not. The most any of the Greeks could manage was Sotirios Kyrgiakos raising his hand in an apparent appeal for offside, a gesture as hopelessly optimistic as any of Ralph Nader’s presidential campaigns, and as meaningless given that the ball to Zurianov was played backwards.

Nikopolidis, a.k.a. Clooney, committed a truly unforgettable blunder (ESPN’s Rece Davis beat me to an easy ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ joke, which meant the best I could come up with was a very weak ‘Aegean’s Eleven’ reference), but if even one defender had taken a few steps, the entire sequence might already be a distant memory, much like Greece’s 2004 triumph.