it s early but i have one game with a special situation to discuss:Larissa - Zenit:Zenit is a very solid russian team. they are by far superior then the greeks, but this game is played on thursday and Zenit has 3 days later on Sunday their biggest games ever. They are leading the russian league 2 point ahead of Spartak Moskow with only one game left...i cannot remember any year when the russian champ. was not from Moscow. They are playing on sunday away at the number 5 team , so definetely no walk over.....this situation bring up the question: are they care at all about the uefa-cup match? will they even take any of their top players on the long journey to greece?? i would not do it.Even if they loose at Larissa it should be no problem for them to qualify for the next round and get under the top 3 of a group of five (The group stage is a joke for the better teams anyway IMO with this qualifying system).i would make Larissa a pretty big bad right now, before the line moves...only problem is that they are a bad team, sitting in the bottom half of the "high powering greek league". maybe they are not even good enough to beat a youth team from russia.still i will give that "non focus"-theory a shot Larissa pk,+0.5 @ 1.97
some comments i found by coach Dick Advokat after the Alkmaar match:-----------------------------------------------------------------You have told before, that domestic league is more important for the team. But you said, that you won’t tell this to players. Do you believe that players have read Russian newspapers and thus their attitude to the game wasn’t that good? DA:No, I couldn’t see that. Both teams worked very hard. We were definitely the better side in the first half. Second half –AZ was well-organized, a lot of players behind the ball, but they still tried to come out to make it dangerous. At the moment that Ari left the pitch there at the advertisement board there was a word a ‘Gift’ in Dutch, have you noted it? Who lost 2 points, and who gained one>? You said yesterday that you would be satisfied with the third place, is this result enough for that? DA: Normally, it must be advantage to play with extra man – no doubt about that. But the second half wasn’t our advantage. We can blame everybody, but it has also to do with the fact the other team played. But I ‘m still very happy with the way the team played ---------------------------------------------------------------he was already resting players 2 weeks ago and realized that s still enough against the best team in group..also "third place is enough" is not pointing to go for a win today
