Preview: Korea Republic – Greece

(GSM) – Korea Republic and Greece will play their opening game of the World Cup at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth. Both countries will look to hit the ground running in a group which also features Argentina and Nigeria.

Greece have been in underwhelming form lately, losing to Paraguay (0-2) in a warm-up match last week which followed a friendly 2-2 draw against Korea DPR.

Their opponents also failed to impress the last two games, which they lost against Spain and Belarus. However, they are a side to be reckoned with since they surprised the world by claiming fourth spot at the 2002 World Cup which they hosted together with Japan.

The Greeks also managed to astonish the football world in recent years when they were crowned European Champions in 2004. Since that tournament in Portugal, coach Otto Rehhagel has the status of an ancient god in the South European country. Guiding Greece to their second World Cup participation have only added to that reputation.

The experienced squad, which contains Euro 2004 champions such as Kostas Katsouranis, Giorgios Karagounis and Angelos Charisteas, will hope to do better than their predecessors in 1994 who went out of the tournament losing all of their group matches without scoring one goal.

The Koreans have a lot more experience at the global stage than their European counterparts. The Tigers of Asia already have seven World Cup participations under their belt. They have built their team around star player Ji-Sung Park who plays for Manchester United. He will be the man to watch along with Jung-Hwan Ahn, the experienced striker who’s still featuring in Italian nightmares as he was responsible for knocking out the Squadra Azzurra at the 2002 World Cup.

Panathinaikos defender Nikos Spyropoulos assured his fellow countrymen that they won’t understimate their opponents and stressed the importance of the match against Korea Republic, ahead of the long awaited opener.

“As everybody knows, the first match is the crunch match. It’s essential to get a winning result.

“We will have to deal with a very disciplined team. I hope that on Saturday we’ll be as fit as possible to achieve that goal.”