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Greece look set to make changes to their 5-3-2 formation as their look to bounce back from defeat against Sweden and get their Euro campaign on track.

Yannis Amanatidis or Nikos Liberopoulos could start as a third striker, meaning no place for stopper Paraskevas Antzas.

Russia's struggling striker Roman Pavlyuchenko returned to training on Friday and could play.

Pavlyuchenko, who injured his thigh against Spain, was missing from a practice session on Thursday.

He appeared to be moving freely during the part of training open to the media on Friday and coach Guus Hiddink said he would make a decision over his fitness on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Manchester City striker Georgios Samaras could again find himself on the bench for defending champions Greece.

Defeat for either side would end their hopes of qualifying for the quarter-finals.

Head-to-heads

This match features the winners of the first European Championship (Russia) against the winners of the last European Championship (Greece).

These nations have met on 19 previous occasions with Russia winning 12 times and Greece three. Russia have defeated Greece nine times in 13 competitive matches. Greece have won three times.

Their most recent meeting was at Euro 2004 with Russia emerging victorious 2-1. Dmitri Kirichenko scored the fastest goal in European Championship history after 75 seconds and Dmitri Bulykin made it 2-0. Zisis Vryzas scored for Greece in their only defeat at Euro 2004.

Team facts - Greece

Defeat against Sweden marks only the second time in the European Championships that the defending champions started their title defence with a loss. In 1980, West Germany defeated champions Czechoslovakia 1-0.

No nation has ever retained the European Championship title and only one nation has won the crown in spite of a defeat in their first match (Netherlands in 1988). In two of the last three European Championships the defending champions have not made it past the group phase.

Team facts - Russia

Tuesday's 4-1 defeat to Spain was Russia's heaviest loss in European Championship history. Russia had also lost three matches in the competition by 3-0.

Coach Guus Hiddink is in charge at his fifth European Championship or World Cup. Only West Germany head coach Helmut Schon was present at more European Championships and World Cups. Hiddink has also become the first head coach to lead two different countries at the European Championship. He was the head coach of the Netherlands in 1996. In that year, he led Holland to the quarter-finals in spite of losing a group match to England 4-1.

This is the fifth European Championship match in which both nations are led by a foreign coach and the only one in the Euro 2008 group phase.

Player facts - Greece

In the opening match, Giorgios Seitaridis picked up his fourth yellow card in the competition, which leaves him one shy of the record held by Gheorghe Hagi, Pavel Nedved and Gianluca Zambrotta. Team mate Giorgios Karagounis is also on four yellow cards at European Championships.

Seitaridis, Vassilis Torosidis and Angelos Charisteas will be suspended for the final group match if they receive a yellow card against Russia.

Player facts - Russia

Andrei Arshavin is suspended for this fixture after being sent off in Russia's final qualification game, a 1-0 win against Andorra. This is the second of his two-match ban.

Russia have only one player in their squad who plays outside the country's domestic league - 1. FC Nurnberg striker Ivan Saenko. No other country at Euro 2008 has so many players from their own domestic competition. If selected, Saenko will run into club team mate Angelos Charisteas.

• Hiddink has said he is unlikely to make any big changes to the team, although he may be forced to if striker Roman Pavlyuchenko does not recover from a thigh problem that forced him to miss some training on Thursday. His absence would be a blow to Russia, already without suspended forward Andrei Arshavin and injured striker Pavel Pogrebnyak. Pavlyuchenko scored their only goal against Spain.

• Apart from injured reserve goalkeeper Costas Halkias, all players took part in the training session on the eve of the match at Salzburg’s Wals-Siezenheim stadium.

Player to watch

Angelos Charisteas  (Greece) : Surely the Greeks cannot play as negatively as they did against Sweden, so attention will turn on Nuremberg ace Charisteas.

Roman Pavluchenko (Russia) : All eyes will be on the striker as he struggles to overcome a thigh problem. If he cannot, Russia could well be in trouble.

Possible Line Up :

Greece : Nikopolidis, Torossidis, Dellas, Kyrgiakos, Seitaridis, Amanatidis, Karagounis, Basinas, Katsouranis, Charisteas, Gekas.

Subs : Patsatzoglou, Liberopoulos, Goumas, Antzas, Chalkias, Giannakopoulos, Vyntra, Spiropoulos, Tziolis, Samaras, Salpingidis, Tzorvas

Manager: Otto Rehhagel

Russia : Akinfeev, Anyukov, Shirokov, Ignashevitch, Zhirkov, Zyrianov, Semak, Sychev, Bilyaletdinov, Semshov, Pavluchenko

Subs : Adamov, Berezutskiy, Malafeev, Bystrov, Saenko, Berezutskiy, Kolodin, Gabulov, Torbinskiy, Yanbaev, Ivanov

Suspended : Arshavin

Manager: Guus Hiddink

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