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
