Death is knocking on the door of Greek Football

Death is knocking on the door of Greek Football. 

For many years right or wrong, smug or not… Olympiakos fans crowed the club were the reason Greek clubs have access to European football via the coefficient ranking. But for just as many years their rivals in Greece said they have had an unfair advantage as they’ve received the majority of the UEFA money meaning they haven’t been able to build their squads.

Both are valid arguments by all sets of fans but after this seasons performances by all clubs which saw PAOK Aris and PAO all unceremoniously bomb out in the qualifiers, we only saw Olympiakos progress to the UEL group stages in bizarre fashion without winning a game in normal time only to then create unwanted club history, going 14 European matches without a win, which speaks volumes of where Greek football is at. 

We have now dropped to an all time low in the coefficient ratings which is disastrous. 

Our highest ranking was 6th which seems like a lifetime ago. 

The equation to fix this is easy. Last season PAOK had a fantastic run in the UECL which got Greece moving, coupled with the points Olympiakos gathered as well, put us in a unique position where we have 5 clubs eligible for either the UCL UEL or UECL in season 2023/2024.

The hard part of a simple equation is that all five clubs at a minimum must qualify for the group stages of any European competition… and then also play football where they again at a minimum win home matches and put themselves in a position where they are playing in the knockout rounds. 

Sounds easy right? Wrong. 

Greek football is littered with finger pointing in all directions. Club owners at loggerheads, a governing body that can’t see the forest from the trees and a league pyramid system that literally dies outside the top division. What’s worse is no one seems to care enough to fix the problems rather they postpone leagues, relegate or abolish historical clubs or just simply turn their backs on it and pretend it doesn’t exist. 

To put this is context. The Greek SL2 is the only professional league that has not started in Europe for the winter footballing league calendar.

Many who read the Greek press, will notice that it looks like Marinakis is making a play to become the EPO president, and whether many of his rivals want to believe or accept this, he’s also gathered a lot of votes from club owners / presidents.

It’s no coincidence that when the current EPO president tried to remove the foreign referees from the derby match between Panathinaikos and AEK, Marinakis in his role as SLGR president was the first to come on strong against this last minute ruling which was quickly followed by both club owners. EPO backed down and the foreign referees were reinstated. 

I’m not having a crack at Baltakos here as we need Greek referees to also grow and take control of matches but there’s a time and place and this one he got terribly wrong. I’m sure he’s got the games best interests at heart and many wish he succeeds in this high pressure job but he needs to be making these and any decisions in consultation with the clubs.

If the current president can’t somehow broker peace in the game and have everyone working together he won’t last.

Interestingly, Marinakis suggested three solutions to key problems: an international panel of 10 referees for the Super League who are independent, higher quality federation executives who can liaise with UEFA on club licensing, and a more serious culture and transparency to attract new sponsors to the league and make Greece’s professional game sustainable. (quoted from https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2022/05/23/marinakis-tells-super-league-club-owners-must-end-culture-corruption-greece/) 

He also stated in the article, 

“I may also clash with AEK, PAOK, Panathinaikos, but this is on the pitch. Here, we must calmly make decisions that will be for the good of both big and small teams.”

Like him or not, if you didn’t see the name attached to these comments you’d say this is spot on. 

This is no puff piece for the Olympiakos owner as whilst I’m a fan of the club, and I can see he clearly loves the club, from a football fans perspective he’s not exactly been an easy person to trust. 

Is there anyone that is willing to do a job that will see Greek football reap the benefits of a long term strategy put in place long after they have left the building? 

So where to from here? 

The short term jab in the arm answer is we need the 5 clubs playing in the groups stages, finish in the top two of their groups respectively or, it would be great to see them all compete and a couple crack the knockout stages with a deep run. 

The long term… Well the buck will now stop with all administrators and regardless of what’s happened in the last decade or so, the club vs club excuses need to end. 

Fans of clubs can and rightly dislike the other as that’s a rivalry, club owners don’t need to be mates either… but if they don’t recognise the peerless state we’re in and work together to fix it 

FROM THE BOTTOM UP 

then they’ll never see it and we’ll keep losing more generations of football fans to the glossy shinny leagues like EPL. 

This Super League season shapes up to be an amazing one with the title race in full swing. If only we could say the same about the health of the game. 

Hellas Football

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