Hellas Football

Asteras Tripolis Season Preview By Alexander Koutakos Life in the Greek footy world is finally back to normal….. Fans are back in the stands, Asteras is loading up on Spanish players and the season has disgracefully been postponed twice over! Clubs have had a long pre-season and many changes have been made throughout the league. A club with one of the strongest showings in pre-season results-wise is Asteras Tripolis. In this blog, I will take a look at Asteras's results in pre-season, transfers and season expectations.  Pre-season: The pre-season for Asteras was like no other. 6 wins out of 6 and 15 goals scored and only 1 conceded. The win against AEK(1-0) and the thrashings of Volos(4-0) and Atromitos(4-1) were certainly the highlights of the pre-season.  The squad was heavily rotated and new players found their way into the XI.  Asteras will be looking to build on this momentum for the regular season. However, the regular season has been postponed and thus, Asteras' mo...

PAOK Season Preview By Alain Anastasakis A summer of unrest followed by more melodrama about TV rights being inserted between two transfer rumours, it's becoming more and more difficult every year to talk about football in Greece.  And PAOK is no exception to the rule.   Back to the pitch! The return of Razvan Lucescu followed by a very successful pre-season, unfortunately provokes contradictory feelings regarding the performances in the European Cup.  The departure of Tzolis, who has not been replaced at the moment, the injury of Nelson Oliveira, which led to the return of Chuba Akpom, the bad form from some veterans in the team can surely cause contradictory feelings among the PAOKtzides. Blame it on the transfers, first of all, where we went, within two weeks, from Victor Claesson and Jan Boril, two high-level players in their national team and recognized on the European stage, to Alexandru Mitrita and Sidcley, two players known to the Romanian technician.  The fi...

Slovan Bratislava vs Olympiakos: Europa League Playoff 2nd Leg Preview By Stephen Kountourou  With that, the final week of European qualifiers is upon us. Sides have competed against one another over the last couple of months just for the hope of reaching and competing in a major UEFA tournament where they will do it all over again in the group stages. It has certainly been a rollercoaster of emotions for supporters of Olympiakos this qualifying campaign as covid cases, injuries, highs of progression and lows of exits have been just a few occurrences since Thrylos began playing back in July. After seeing off opponents Slovan Bratislava 3-0 in Piraeus, the Greek champions will now travel to Slovakia with one foot in the Europa League group stages to officially put the tie to bed.  While the aggregate score is comfortable, Pedro Martins' men must treat this fixture like a level tie if they want to enter the Europa League with momentum. So for this week, I will be previewing Olym...

AEK Athens Season Preview 2021-22 By Greg Gavalas   The new season for AEK Athens has seen many changes however it’s hard to not feel like more of the same so far and if anything, perhaps even more disappointment after AEK’s European run turned into one of the clubs worst ever, eliminated form the UEFA Europa Conference League at the first hurdle. New Coach Like the last few seasons, AEK has brought in a new coach, Vladen Milojevic, the 51-year-old Serbian is familiar with Greek Football having played most of his footballing career in the Alpha Ethniki from 1993 to 2004 and is best remembered for his time with Panathinaikos and Iraklis from 1997 to 2003. Milojevic also coached Panionios from 2016-2017 and had a good run with the team before dominating in his homeland with Red Star Belgrade. The new coach has not had a great start at AEK, the European exit to Bosnian outsiders Velex Mostar was a huge blow for everyone, having seen the team get out enthused in Bosnia was concerning a...

Panathinaikos Season Preview 2021-2022 By Tony The preseason is virtually over now, with only the typical Greek bureaucratic nonsense surrounding television deals delaying the league’s start by another week or so. With that said, now would be a good time to sit back and assess some of the concerns, expectations, and predictions I have for Panathinaikos as we head into the new season.   Over the summer I wrote about what my expectations were for the summer preparations in light of the new season quickly approaching. I mainly pointed out that the squad needed to bring in at least three or four players that were starting caliber. One month later, with the transfer window closing in a little over a week’s time, the club has made just one more signing since then (Ruben Perez had already been signed at the time of the summer blog.)     What does this mean? Well, it means I am concerned. Ivan Jovanovic has gone on and stated multiple times that the club will bring in a player fo...

TV Deal Failures, Will Clubs Ever Learn? By George New year, same deal. The league has been postponed due to certain clubs inability to get themselves a suitable TV deal. So whos at fault? The EPO? The TV companies? The clubs? Whilst a lot of the blame has been put on the EPO and the TV companies. To a certain point that is the case, but the reality is a lot of the clubs aren't helping their cause either. A quick scan through social media accounts and we see clubs that have very little to no social media presence.  In 2021 where social media rules over every other type of media in regards to building up a team for their fans, hyping up the league, talking about the club, its history and the hero's of yesteryear all the while whilst keeping communication open with its fans so they feel part of the club, very little SLGR clubs understand this basic principle.  Ionikos FC who captured a lot of fans hearts with their promotion to the top last used Twitter on the the 1st of July to...

Olympiakos vs Slovan Bratislava: Europa League Playoffs 1st leg Preview  By Stephen Kountourou  It certainly was not a memorable week of European football for supporters of Greek champions Olympiakos. After going ahead before halftime, capitulating in the first ten minutes of the 2nd half, equalising and then going down to ten men, Thrlyos then went the distance to penalties. It was clear before the spot kicks that the team had already mentally lost the game and it showed in their penalty taking as they were knocked out of the Champions League third qualifying round for the first time since 2016/17 by Ludogorets.  While the financial loss to the club for failing to reach the group stages of Europe’s elite competition, the possibilities of a good run in continental competition is still there. They are one playoff round away from the Europa League group stages, and if that objective is not met there is also the Europa Conference league that Olympiakos has already qualified ...

Ludogorets vs Olympiakos: UCL 3rd Round Qualifying  2nd Leg Preview  With a matter of days to go before the second half of the Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round, a nerve racking waits for supporters of teams in this stage to see whether their side takes the next step into the playoffs or if they fall short and resign to a place in the Europa League at the same stage. As I said last week after a 1-1 draw in Piraeus, it’s all to play for in the tie featuring Olympiakos and Ludogorets.  With no away goals to worry about, Thrylos travel to Bulgaria with almost a clean slate to try to put the tie to bed and reach the UCL playoffs for the third season in a row. But much like in the packed Karaiskakis stadium it's going to be a tough match against a Ludogorets side who have shown themselves to have the ability to hurt the Greek Champions in areas of the pitch. So once again I'll be previewing a tie on a knife edge while also attempting to improve my poor prediction record. L...

Bohemian Misery By Alain Anastasakis   Everything started with a very good pre-season for PAOK. Lucescu, back home, showed the style of play we love, and the team was full of confidence following an very entertaining win in Rotterdam against Feyenoord. It would be unfair to say it was just a friendly.  During the summer, PAOK showed very good quality and the team seemed to be starting on a great basis for the upcoming season. It's always a cliché, but we know that things can never be that simple and a twisted mind could have maybe seen the infancy of what happened when we heard Lucescu say: "With all due respect, we came to win and qualify". This could sound like a confident man but it was nothing but a presumptuous statement after the disaster the Dikefalo experienced against the Irish team who has only experienced European football for the third time in 10 years.  This sentence even probably boosted the Irish, who played the game of their lives.    The co...