Greece boss Gus Poyet enjoyed a laugh at old memories of Windsor Park before going through final preparations with his players for Thursday night's Nations League match against Northern Ireland.
The opening fixture of League C Group 2 has brought Poyet back to south Belfast, where he and Dennis Wise travelled to watch David Healy play for Northern Ireland in 2007.
The former Elland Road coaches were desperate to work out why the striker was performing so well for his country but struggling to produce with Leeds.
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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 in the process.
“For some reason David was on fire with Northern Ireland but we couldn’t make him score with Leeds,” said Poyet.
“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.
“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 will be taking charge of his first competitive match at Windsor, 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.
“I’m confident,” Giakoumakis said. “I’m just doing my job. I get paid for what I do. This is my job, scoring goals. I’m not feeling that I’m doing something special. This is my position in the field, my duty.”
Northern Ireland will have no doubt watched Poyet’s only two games in charge to date – a 1-0 friendly win over Romania and a 1-0 defeat to Montenegro – while preparing, but given how much Poyet is learning himself, Greece may look very different on Thursday.
A run of four games in 11 days, forced by the changes to the international calendar to accommodate a winter World Cup, will afford the Uruguayan 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!” said Poyet.
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