Greece boss Gus Poyet enjoyed a laugh at old memories of Windsor Park as he returnd for last Thursday's Nations League match against Northern Ireland. The opening fixture of League C Group 2 brought Poyet back to south Belfast, where he and Dennis Wise travelled to watch David Healy play for Northern Ireland in 2007, desperate to work out why the striker was performing so well for his country but struggling to produce with Leeds United.
Poyet, assistant manager to Wise at the time, watched on as Healy scored both goals in a 2-1 win over Sweden, exactly as they expected, and got some stick from the Northern Ireland fans as they did so.
"For some reason David was on fire with Northern Ireland but we couldn't make him score with Leeds," Poyet said. "We thought, 'Let's go and watch him live' so we came here, we sat down and watched an incredible game. As expected, David scored.
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"The whole stadium was singing, 'Are you watching Dennis Wise?' I was trying to get away from Wisey, he was dragging me back!"
Poyet, who took the Greece job in February and took charge of his first competitive match in Thursday night's 1-0 win, is hoping to have his own David Healy in the form of Celtic striker Giorgos Giakoumakis, who scored 16 of his 17 goals for the Scottish champions since the turn of the year.
The 27-year-old still only has one international goal, scored on debut against Cyprus in November 2020, but could not be in better form coming into the new Nations League campaign. A run of four games in 11 days, forced by the changes to the international calendar to accommodate a winter World Cup, will afford Poyet the sort of time national managers rarely get with players outside of tournaments.
"Normally you get two games, two, two. Now it's four, bam. Welcome to the Nations League!" Poyet said. "I think for us it is important to spend time with the players. Even coming here with Giorgos in the car, you start to know them personally, to know the person, how they think...
"We try to know certain characteristics. You want to make a team play a certain style of football, but you also need to adapt to the history of the Greece team, and the characteristics the players have."
