now Spain and England being involved in a Euros final not crazily surprising Jesus Navas being involved in it slightly more surprising two strong Nations two strong footballing histories one strong Striker and Harry Kane but 20 years ago this week and the same could not be said euro 2004 was one of the most ridiculous International tournaments of all time with Greece providing one of the biggest upsets the world of football has ever seen but how exactly did they do it how did Greece win Euro 2004 imagine Leicester winning the Prem PR League out of nowhere okay after almost getting relegated the crazy magical season that was new Heroes being found and Unearthed hidden gems like Jamie Bard and goo ke Riyad mahrez but now imagine that all of their surnames had six syllables in them this is in reality what Greece winning Euro 2004 would be but the journey and the storyline of it makes it even more incredible a better use of six syllables though subscribe to this channel I think does that have six press that big red button really helps me out if you go on to enjoy this one now as is the case with all things that happened 22 years ago this storyline starts in 2002 and like all bad things that happen on this Earth it actually involves England it's disgusting it's disgusting the state of play is the England are looking to qualify for the World Cup of 2002 we're facing off against the gree side that's having an extremely average campaign going into the final minute of this game with draw in and David Beckham steps up to take a free kick that would fire England automatically through to the tournament rather than having to go through the playoffs he's it's an incredible moment for us it's a defining moment for David Beckham it would also turn out to be a major turning point for Greece you see their FA after such a disappointing campaign said n g we're not happy with that one so they employed a new manager German Auto ragle we'll come back to him in a little bit now it's probably no surprise to you at this point given they went on to win Euro 2004 that they did in fact qualify for Euro 20 2004 but for the qualifying stages of the tournament that happened in 2003 and 04 they were actually in pot seed all right there was only one worst ranked nation that made it to the tournament and that was lvia according to the FIFA world rankings so pound-for-pound they were the second least likely team to win the entire thing we wouldn't have believed that from qualifying they start off with two losses from two but would then win all of their remaining games all six of them back to back and they top a qualifying group that included Andre chevchenko Ukraine at the of his powers and also a Spain side that featured the likes of rul eaas and caros pool this was just before Spain's proper golden generation the one that won the World Cup and the Euros but it was still an extremely strong side nonetheless meanwhile gree's side featured only eight players that actually played outside of the Greek league and I'll tell you what let's talk about the players okay because you'll get a grasp really of the level of ability that they were working with and how impressive it was they'd won six games on the bounce going into the tournament first up theodoris zagorakis he was the captain he'd go on to win the player of the tournament actually but we'll come on to that in a little bit he was a Leicester city cult hero played for them in the early 2000s mostly because he had to go in goal one time because they ran out of goalkeepers and he was also a substitute when they won The League Cup a substitute he didn't actually always start for alester City team that got relegated during this time in defense we had Nikos dabas a pretty solid Center back really that made over 130 appearances for Newcastle but he is most well known for being the guy that Dennis Burham spun for his amazing goal for Arsenal Demis nicoladis is considered one of the best Greek forwards of all time he play on the left during this tournament making massive use of his extreme pace which would be very useful for Greece on the Counterattack he played in Greece's entire career up to this point apart from one season at Atletico Madrid Angelos Charis deas had had one of the most International careers up to this point compared to any of the other players in this squad he'd won the league and cup double with verman played for Ajax where he' scored 12 in 31 and won the Dutch cup and then he' also played for fyord and by lusin he was their number nine for the tournament their main Striker and one man that English fans May well know is stos jeanopolis otherwise known as Stelios quite literally because his surname was too long for some people to say he was one of the stars of his Squad best known for providing Bolton with more screamers than Thon no maybe screaming actually so what the likes of Michael Owen Steven Gerard Zinedine zidan tieron re pavl nedved Lou Figo and Co were running rampant across Europe This is what Greece had to bring to the table now don't get it twisted these were players with decent amount of ability and their performances had done more than enough for them to qualify but there was no star player particularly there was no star man that was even in a conversation for a Balon door or being one of the top 50 players in the world at that moment in time but the most important thing here was not the players it was the manager I spoke about Otto Ray harle earlier he was the man who just got the job for this tournament and he was an experienced manager around about 30 years at this point he'd won a Bundesliga twice and the European Cup winners cup with ver and Kaiser slon he'd been really successful in the 1990s he was brought in and realized something very important all these Don [ __ ] hate each other yeah the culture at the time was not great amongst the squad because there was such a rivalry between all the major Greek clubs panthan iOS Olympiacos AK Athens their players and fans and the entire establishment just hated the [ __ ] out of each other so when it came to actually building a unit to some degree to actually play international football you couldn't see any of that with Greece cuz there wasn't any of that everything was far too tribal because of their domestic clubs Otto's main goal was to eradicate that completely and build some kind of togetherness and unity within the side P the Nikos and olympios players were getting a little bit too stuck in with slight tackles in training handshakes between players were very tense when they stepped out of the shower and that was something that Otto had to eradicate he had to bring some sort of unity to decide if they were going to overachieve a tournament the stigma around his team was that they were boring and they were I'm not going to lie lots of lows scoring games but an extremely strong defense that barely ever conceded even through the qualifying campaign you weren't going to out defend Greece these lot were going to be victorious purely by sending the opposition Striker to sleep cuz he's not been involved in the game for 35 minutes as I said there were no star men there were no Ned veds rude vanoy Zlatan ibrahimovic's Michael balac or Wayne Rooney Greece had absolutely none of that most letters per surname probably up there expected cuses per capita right at the top of any of the teams involved so that brought us to the actual tournament in Portugal not much was expected out of this gree side okay obviously they' put some good form together to top their group but there was still some extremely good sides in this tournament they'd end up in a hectic group a with Spain who they' qualified with and then Portugal and a Russia side that was another Underdog it'd be an extremely close run group it start proceedings with a 2-1 win over Portugal now that in itself was a crazy result even without context GRE speaking Portugal first game wild they're the second lowest ranked team in the entire tournament and just to make it even more mental this was their first ever International Tournament win like ever if you thought these lot were an underdog for like no reason they genuinely had never gone to an International Tournament and won a game in the history of Greece Greece is bare old okay not even in the Zeus championships of 600 BC had they actually won a game they'd set out the target of winning one match during this tournament and they' done it in the first game but the good results wouldn't stopped there they' made history they' beaten the likes of Figo ruy Costa and embryo Cristiano Ronaldo but the good results wouldn't stop there as they then Drew against Spain a surprise defeat if anything against Russia put them into a little bit of Jeopardy but thankfully for them Spain and Portugal Drew which went they went through second in the group now Euro 2004 was a smaller tournament than what we get nowadays there was only 16 teams if you qualified from your group you were immediately into quarterfinals none of this best third place teams and slapping yourself into the round of 32 or saying no if you got out of your group you were already halfway towards winning this team closer to the final makes it easier to win all right and in the quarterfinal they'd play they'd play France oh yeah no it's kasas guys wrap up these were the reigning Champions all right David trees's golden goal against Italy had won France Euro 2000 they were just the best team on the planet realistically the squad had the likes of zidan Lilian turam tiar HRI Claude Mele Robert Perez half of them had just gone Invincible with Arsenal in the Premier League Greek fans who traveled out for the tournament were already packing their suitcase the night before m [ __ ] wee wee bon bon Merchants but unbelievably the unthinkable would happen Janis deas would score with half an hour to go and France would be unable to respond no Zaden zidan magic tierion re clamped out of the game Greece had somehow Against All Odds managed to grind out a dull defensive 1-nil Victory against the reigning Champions and odds on favorite for the tournament next up was a semi and also the final four of the tournament they would be facing up against the Czech Republic now this is a very different Czech Republic to what we have now this was the definition of a golden generation pavl nedd Milan baros T and janva just to name a few this Czech Squad was actually pound-for-pound pretty good probably like top six teams in involved in the tournament it was a team full of Ballers but what happened in the game for [ __ ] sake it was nil nil in this one for much longer though this time we even head into extra time with a score still goalless the Czech Republic had failed to break through the Stout defense the absolute unit of a back four that was Greek's defensive line the Euro 2004 was unique and this game was the definition of unique cuz back then it wasn't just a situation of extra time if things were level after 90 minutes you know nowadays extra time for 30 minutes if it's still Level still a deadlock we go to a penalty shoot out but FIFA and UEFA felt a little bit zesty during this time frame they were feeling a little bit fruity in the early 2000s they started adding things to the beautiful game first of all called Golden Goal and then second of all when they kind of decided they were fed up of that they downgraded it to something called Silver go now a lot of people have no idea what silver goal even is because there was only one of them in history and it was scored by Greece in this game Golden Goal in essence was during extra time if you scored you won the game immediately let's say it's the 20th minute of extra time you go one n up that is it wrap up the game everybody goes home you don't carry on till the end of extra time that was got rid of because teams were a little bit too hesitant to go forward because if they ConEd that they knew the game was immediately done so instead they changed the rolling to be called Silver goal where basically if you scored the opponents would have till the end of that half of football to score and return favor and return serve if they didn't then the game would end at at halim or whatever the slight issue with the only silver goal in history is that it was scored in injury time of of the first half of extra time so in essence it was just a Golden Goal anyway because it didn't give the Czech Republic the chance to actually reply the game just immediately ended anyway and that meant an improbable almost impossible final for the minnows that were Greece they had somehow managed to grind their way through the knockout stages after In fairness a pretty impressive group stage and in a full circle moment they'd face Portugal the team they beat in the first game of the entire tournament Portugal themselves had gone on a crazy Journey they knocked out the Netherlands with a very strong side and England's golden generation as well probably the team that should have won this tournament they were hitting form at the right time and it would have been the perfect storyline for portug but turns out a win for Greece would have been an even more perfect story line a ball was floated into the area and with a goalkeeper in no man's land chis stas found himself the hero for Greece again once more they would suffocate the life out of their opponent's attackers and would grind themselves again to yet another defensive kind of dull one- nil Victory to complete one of the maddest Underdog stories in the history of football Greece were officially euro2 2004 Champions now you think this moment would be like a joyous occasion amongst football fans everyone who's ever existed in history loves the idea of an unfancied high odds protagonist surprising everybody but this was the one Underdog Story that nobody wanted at the time you see everyone was very concerned about the fact that Greece actually played such defensive and generally speaking kind of boring football and it was guys they were they were winning games 1 nil if we were complaining about G Southgate throughout Euro 2024 then Greece were 10 times worse especially in an era before Pep Guardiola terrorism intense Ticky Tacker and tactical analysis football was probably in its most free flowing during this time period you had golden Generations you had players that were on a very even playing field when it came to like Balon door nominations we had the beautiful players like ronaldino around R9 Zinedine zidan tierion re magicians like Zlatan Ibrahimovic Robert Perez Wonder kids like Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney for a team of relatively unknown footballers to just come and park the bus and just deny all these amazing exciting like fluid teams the chance to win the whole tournament went down quicker than you could say jeanopolis probably but did the people of Greece actually care about that not even slightly to them it was a miracle and it truly was these players would go down in folklore and would be Legends of Greece forever from never winning a game to winning it all it was an incredible storyline as I said the aftermath was was mixed that that's being generous people I think were mostly concerned that defensive football would now take over they'd almost cracked the code they found a little cheat code and if little old Greece could just defend against everybody then now all the big teams all the big nations would switch and decide to just really suffocate all the life and excitement out of football in order to try and win and I guess defensive football was definitely taken more seriously from that point onwards if you compare the defending probably of Euro 2004 to the defending of Euro 2024 in the space of 20 years defending has got a lot better than it was then but you still have had exciting teams win international tournaments since the likes of Spain yes it is quite tactical but they played lovely beautiful football throughout the time that they were dominating I think if anything it probably showed that there is a balance that needs to be struck at International tournaments I think nowadays you can't win a tournament just from parking the bus but you also can't win a tournament just from outscoring everybody you do have to have a balance of actual genuine ability going forward even if you're not showing it at all times and having a very very strong defense that's going to concede like three goals maximum I think overall Greece's achievements really should be celebrated I know at the time it was received badly because people were scared about what football could become it wasn't exciting but overall the achievement was absolutely nuts the Euros May well be done now but who are you expecting to be the next Dark Horses of International Football the next team that could maybe provide a grease Underdog Story maybe going into the World Cup of 2026 let me know down in the comments section whilst you're at it feel free to slap a like on the video and subscribe if you are new to the channel especially if you enjoyed this video it really does help me out you can also follow me on social media it is @ official FNG on Twitter and on Insta it's been a pleasure ranting at you guys today have a wonderful day enjoy yourselves and goodbye [Music]