The Current State Of Football On Greece’s Biggest Island - Crete

The Current State Of Football On Greece’s Biggest Island - Crete

By Alexander Koutakos

On this journey, we have travelled so far to the Greek provinces of Laconia, Messinia and Western Macedonia. 

This week, we continue to journey around Greece on Greece’s biggest island (Crete). 

Crete is home to the cities/large towns of Heraklion, Chania, Rethymno, Ierapetra and many others. Historically, Crete has been mass producing footballing talent for the Ethniki Omada and for the global footballing world. 

The island of Crete itself has produced the footballing talents of Georgios Samaras, Giorgos Giakoumakis, Nikos Machlas, Michalis Sifakis, Petros Marinakis and many others. The “big 4” teams in Crete at the moment are OFI , Ergotelis, Chania and OF Ierapetra. In this article, I will be going over the current situation for each of the four aforementioned Cretan clubs and I will then be going over the current situation of youth development across the entire region.

The Current State Of OFI (Heraklion) FC

Currently, OFI is in a hot mess. Moreover, OFI currently sits in 12th place(really 6th in the play-out group), but they are only one point above Larissa who are dead last on 19 points. For OFI, this season started as expected. However, OFI quickly had a humongous dip in form and it does not look like they will be able to bounce back in time. 

Relegation is a serious threat and could eventually be on the cards for Crete’s biggest club. Now that Simos (their former manager) is gone there is some hope for OFI. 

In my humble opinion, I believe that their relegation battle with Panetolikos, AEL Larissa will go down to the wire! As a neutral in this matter, I am quite excited to witness the relegation battle fold out in the coming month and a half. 

The Current State Of Ergotelis FC

At the moment Ergotelis are challenging for promotion to the Super League (A Ethniki as it should be called) from the Super League 2 (Beta Ethniki as it should be called). Ergotelis currently sits in 4th place in the Super League 2 (Beta Ethniki). 

They started off the season quite well, however Ergotelis just recently lost to Levadiakos, Chania, Karaiskakis and Xanthi. If they are to get promoted, Taousianis (the coach of Ergotelis) needs to elevate his players moral and physical fitness. Currently, they have been lacking the former and the latter to occur and it has really cost them lately. Now they are six points behind Ionikos and there are only 5 games left before the play-offs. 

Ergotelis needs a confidence bolstering win and lucky for them, they have Trikala this weekend who are currently 10th place in the Super League 2 (Beta Ethniki). In my opinion, Ergotelis could get promoted, however that will only occur if Taousianis can turn his team around and start getting wins as they did a month ago.

The Current State Of Chania FC

Currently, Chania FC are a mid table caliber team in the Super League 2 (Beta Ethniki). They currently sit in 6th place with a respectable 25 points and could potentially push for promotion. But, it would be a tough task. If their star player, Dimitris Diamantopoulos shows up and starts banging in some goals, they could easily get promoted. 

At the moment he only has 4 goals, but he could have easily scored a lot more. Diamantopoulos will not win the golden boot this season because Matias Castro (Ionikos Striker) already has 10 goals in 17 games. 

However, Chania  FC who are managed by Nikos Papadopoulos are a well balanced side and if they can string some results together, they could potentially get promoted to the Super League(A Ethniki). 

The Current State Of "OF Ierapetra"

Currently, Ierapetra are in the relegation battle in the Super League 2 (Beta Ethniki). At the moment, they sit in 11th place with only 11 points through 17 games. Ierapetra has only won two games this season and those two wins were against Panachaiki (1-0) and Karaiskakis (3-2). 

Things are certainly not looking bright and relegation could be on the cards for Ierapetra. Things will only change if Timos Kavakas (the manager of Ierapetra), can change things around and implement a new playing style that can achieve the results necessary to stay in the Super League 2 (Beta Ethniki). 

It will be tough for OF Ierapetra to finish above the relegation zone but they could very well stay up.

The Current State Of Youth Development In Crete 

Youth development in Crete is far superior than a vast majority of regions in Greece and it only trails the metropolitan areas of Athens and Thessaloniki in terms of overall quality. 

To be more precise and elaborate, there are three reasons why. Firstly, because Crete’s facilities are fairly well kept compared to other rural areas in Greece. Secondly, because the main clubs in the region have strong academies. 

Lastly, because Crete boasts some of Greece’s best coaches in their youth system. Also, in Crete things run somewhat better across all fields and areas of life to say the least. 

Whether it is the average yearly income, unemployment rate, quality of life, job opportunities and much more, Crete usually does better than most regions and even does better than Attica in some. For example, in 2018 Crete had an unemployment rate of 13%(which is quite bad to be honest), but it was way better than Attica’s unemployment rate which was 20% in 2018. 

On the footballing side, Attica has better youth systems, but Crete does have a solid base in place for overall youth development in Crete. In my opinion, if Crete had the same amount of funding from the government as Attica over the past 50 years, Crete would have a better youth system than in Attica at the moment.

Final Remarks

To conclude, Crete boasts some strong clubs in Greece and Crete also has a very nice youth development system in comparison to the other Greek regions. 

Hopefully, the Cretan teams can start challenging the big clubs in Greece more often and can continue to produce some more exceptional young Greek talents that may eventually play for the Ethniki one day!

Hellas Football 

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