GREEK FIGURES
The first figure
issued in Olympiakos 1999-2000 kit was that of Giovanni
This was the "pilot" figure and good sales obviously determined
the releases
of another 11 Olympiakos figures on a monthly basis
The 11 players featured in 2000-2001 kit were
Eleftheropoulos
(31 goalkeeper)
Choutos
(9)
Djordjevic (11)
Amanatidis (5)
Georgatos (21)
Par Zetterberg (20)
Ze Elias (13)
Karataidis (3 captain)
Ofori’quaye
(24)
Niniadis
(4)
For the
2001-2002 season
Olympiakos then released a figure of their former
Sampdoria & Middlesborough based French player
Christian Karembeu
At this
point an unexpected thing happened !
One of the other 2 big Athens based football clubs, Panathinaikos, (AEK is
the 3rd)
then issued a superb figure of the brilliant Portuguese player Paulo Sousa
These Paulo Sousa figures sold out very
very quickly, and although I initially managed to obtain a few of them, I
have since been unable to find any more
This figure has now been followed up 2 months down the line by another release
in 2001-2002 Panathinaikos kit
The new "boy wonder" of Greek football, hails from Paralimni on
the island of Cyprus
where Panathinaikos constantly scout for new players
Michalis Konstantinou
is the club's best Cypriot find for many years and a certain star for the
future
He is held in very high esteem in Cyprus and when I visited Paralimni in 2001
his skills were brought to my attention by many of the local football pundits
including certain members of his family
Nine more issues
from Panathinaikos have now appeared :-
Krystos
Warzycha (#9) the Polish born "all time highest Panathinaikos goalscorer",
Nikos
Liberopoulos (#21), the Danish defender Rene Henriksen (#2)
the Panathinaikos goalkeeper Nikopolidis (#1),
Goumas (#8) the first Greek figure issued for 2003,
the
"left winger" Pantelis Konstantinidis
(#27)
(recently acquired by Panathinaikos
from PAOK Salonica),
the
Greek international midfielder Aggelos Basinas (#20),
in May 2003 the soon
to be AC Milan player Karagounis (#26)
and
in July 2003 a "double release" of Kolkka (#11) the Finnish winger
& Michaelson (#12) the Danish midfielder
After
a 3 year absence of Panathinaikos figure releases the club unexpectedly issued
a figure of their Brazilian midfielder Flavio Conceiçâo in February
2006
The experienced 31 year old has represented his country Brazil 48 times &
has previously played in Spain (Deportivo La Corruña & Real Madrid)
and in Turkey (Galatasaray)
A month later in March
2006 the figure of Dimitris Papadopoulos was issued, followed in April 2006
by Igor Biscan (ex Liverpool) and then in May 2006 the Argentinian Ezequil
Gonzalez (ex Fiorentina). The Greek international striker Fanis Gekas was
the next figure issued in June 2006 followed by goalkeeper Mario Galinovic
in September 2006
I hope that you have enjoyed reading this article
If you are
interested in purchasing any of the above figures please contact me
via e-mail on the link below
