Greece I Division

The Greek premier league was not much of a show this season – one team dominated and there was no real battle for survival at the bottom. AO Kastoria was last with 20 points and their fairytale period ended. AS Rodos was 17th with 21 points, a team expected to finish in the relegation zone. Panachaiki (Patras) – 16th with 26 points. The only question was about the 4th team going down – Panionios (Athens) and Macedonikos (Thesaloniki) were tied with 29 points. Panionios had better goal-difference and usually that would have been enough to top Makedonikos, but there was no such tie-breaker in Greece, so the teams proceeded to a relegation play-off. Justice prevailed, so to say – Panionios won 3-2 and Makedonikos went down.

Nothing much in the middle zone of the league.

Bearded PAS (Giannina) settled for comfortable 9th place – this club performed well ever since it was promoted in the 1970s and by now appeared to be solid mid-table team. Well, appearances could be misleading.

Iraklis (Thesaloniki) was 8th with 34 points – the highest placed of the lower-half, but still comfortable teams. Yet, Iraklis was a disappointment in a way – they had arguably the greatest player at this time, the Soviet born Hadzipanagis. They had 2 former Bulgarian national team players – Boko Dimitrov and Angel Rangelov – in the middle of defense. A strong pair of central-defenders, who were still not too old and had plenty of experience. Iraklis should have been going up… instead it stayed constantly in mid-table. As for the Bulgarians, they were becoming the prime import for Greeks clubs at this time and there were quite a few in the league. Just recently Rangelov confessed that his years with Iraklis were the best time in his career – may be that was why the club was not going up? Players, having it easy and not pushing too much, just enjoying life.

It was the other way around at the island of Crete – OFI (Iraklion) ended 7th this year with 37 points and were the 2nd highest scorers in the championship. They also had Bulgarian of a kind – the ethnic Greek Tomas Lafchis, their young goalkeeper, was not only born and raised in Bulgaria, but even played for the national team – which actually finished his international career. After going to Greece, he was never called to play for Bulgaria and could not play for Greece either. His was a mysterious case – recently it was revealed that he was an officer of the Bulgarian Secret Police, which implies that possible he was sent to Greece with some kind of mission. True, he played for Levski-Spartak (Sofia) before moving to Greece – the club belonged to the Police and at least nominally all players were made officers, so to receive big salaries and keep fake amateur status, but what possible secret mission a goalkeeper could perform in the deep Greek province? Laughable story, never elaborated, only insinuated, but on the field Lafchis played well enough to attract the interest of Panathinaikos and soon joined the big club. But OFI was going up, their strongest period just started and with or without Lafchis, they were going to be one of the best Greek clubs in the later 1980s.

As for the future Lafchis’ club, Panathinaikos suffered very weak season – they finished 6th with 37 points. Ahead of OFI only on goal-difference and far behind the top 5 teams. A disaster really. And one more failure of once famous Romanian coach Stefan Kovacs – he failed everywhere he worked after Ajax (Amsterdam). Something was wrong with the squad, hard to say what, but at least one thing was sure: players like Galakos and Kirastas reached their rather low peak. Kapsis was too old already. Double that for the Greek national team goalkeeper Konstantinou – both getting old and never too good. Foreigners were of the same mold – the Dutch Tscheu La Ling was more or less failed promise and the Norwegian striker Arne Dokken was hardly a star player. Panathinaikos had rather ordinary and uninspired squad and needed a big shake-up.

Aris (Thesaloniki) had a good season – 5th with 41 points. By no means a title contender, but among the best and keeping there. They still lost to their city rivals PAOK, though – PAOK finished 4th with 42 points. AEK (Athens) took the bronze with 45 points, losing silver on worse goal-difference. They lost to the greatest surprise this year – the usually lowly and not at all regular member of first division AE Larissa soared to 2nd place. They never finished that high before and nobody expected them to be there, but they were. Thanks to Poles – the coach Jacek Gmoch and the aging by now member of the great 1974 Polish squad Kazimierz Kmiecik. Looked like one time wonder, but it was not going to be so – Larissa had more in their sleeves. But surprise teams are just that – no matter how inspired, they very rarely are able to really challenge the status quo. And Larissa did not.

Olympiakos (Piraeus) won 20 games, tied 10, lost only 4 and had no competition at all this season. They finished 5 points ahead of Larissa. Not without trouble, though… Kazimierz Gorski was replaced during the season by arguably the best ever Greek coach Alketas Panagoulis. The squad, although superior in Greece, was not much – the imports were hardly known or becoming known: two midfielders, one Norwegian – Roger Albertsen, and one Uruguayan – Vince Estavillo. It was rather the general weakness of the opponents than true class, but nobody judges harshly champions. Yet, it was not a squad able to win a double.