Giorgos Giakoumakis has called out his new Atlanta United teammates over their leadership qualities as form comes hard to find in the MLS.
The Greek striker won plenty of plaudits during his just over 18 months with Ange Postecoglou's side, buying into his 'we never stop' mentality to win a Premiership and League Cup crown. He left for America in February and while scoring five times in eight games, Atlanta have won one of their last seven overall, including a shock Open Cup exit to lower league side Memphis 901. Sunday's 3-1 defeat to Charlotte made it four defeats on the spin although they are still fourth in the Eastern Conference.
Key leader Brad Guzan has been out with injury and Giakoumakis has been left perplexed at the lack of leaders on the park, as he called for a similar mentality to the one he adopted at Celtic. He told SportsWorldInfo: "The leader can be in the dressing room, but the real leader for me is on the field. If you’re talking too much in here and then you go out and you don’t show anything, then you are not a leader.
"We are having a tough period right now, but these periods I think create champions. If you can come out stronger from this situation that means we are strong. We need to show now to ourselves first of all and our fans that we are really strong and get over this period and come back to the glory days and victories.
"We have to grow up and change our complete mentality. To basically create this champion mentality that we don’t have in the most possible way. Embracing that mentality, creating that mentality now the whole game will change for us.
"If you have the wrong mentality then you have lack of intensity and lack of expectations from yourself and when you don’t have expectations for yourself then your intensity is not that big. Everything is connected and I agree.”
