Greece said on Sunday that their 2-0 loss to South Korea had not sounded the death knell for their World Cup campaign, insisting that they were now targeting a victory over Nigeria.

In their opening game of the June 11-July 11 tournament, the Koreans' speed, sharp tactics and hunger had Greece in all sorts of trouble.

Lax defending contributed to the first goal when the Greek defence failed to deal with Ki Sung Yueng's freekick from beside the left corner flag.

The ball skimmed over the heads of the Greek defence for Lee Jung Soo to volley in at the far post.

The Koreans wrapped up a deserved three points early in the second half when captain Park Ji Sung beat off defenders Avraam Papadopoulos and Loukas Vyntra and slotted the ball past keeper Alexandros Tzorvas.

Tzorvas said that the Greek squad would now work on regrouping and readjusting its sights on what he called a "very strong Nigeria team" in Bloemfontein on Thursday.

"We will spend the next couple of days trying to regroup. After the defeat we're trying to put aside the criticism and recover as fast as possible for the upcoming match," the Panathinaikos shot-stopper said.

"We now have to prepare very well to play and perform better against Nigeria and try to get our first win."

Tzorvas said South Korea, who top Group B from Argentina - 1-0 winners over Nigeria on Saturday, had capitalised on simple mistakes.

"We have to see the overall picture and what went wrong," he said. "The goals we conceded were the results of mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, and we made mistakes as a team not as individuals.

"South Korea were very disciplined in the game and took advantage of our mistakes and that's why they won."

The goalkeeper acknowledged that Greece had failed to maximise their height superiority at the set-piece, and would now turn their full attention to the Super Eagles.

"We didn't take advantage of set pieces as we said we would try and do before the South Korea game," he said.

"Nigeria are a very strong team. We will now analyse all aspects of our game and that of Nigeria to see what we have to do to win.

"Nigeria have very strong, physical players but we must first fix and prepare our team and then we see what we need to do to stop our opponent."

He added: "We carry on. We all know that in football a lot of times you have bad results. The best thing you can do is to carry on.

"We're not disappointed, we have to be realistic about our potential and what we can do."

Panathinaikos defender Vyntra, partly to blame for the second goal, gave a blunt assessment of what was needed in the win-or-bust game against Nigeria.

"We have to go there and win," he said.

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