March 10 - Bubble and Squeek

THEY are viewed as one of the poor relations of the European football family yet Greece are the current European champions and the country is home to one of the most hotly contested derby matches in the world.

The Derby of the Eternal Enemies could be the title of an Indiana Jones epic but it is actually the name given to the matches contested between Panathinaikos and Olympiacos.

It was on this day in 1925 that one half of that rivalry was formed when Olympiacos were founded. The new club was the result of a meeting between members of Piraeus Football Club and Piraeus Fan Club who decided to join forces to create a new unified team, hence the club’s full name: Olympiacos Club of Fans of Piraeus FC; Piraeus being a suburb of Athens.

It didn’t take long for this new club to capture the imagination of the whole of Greece as their team including the five Andrianopoulos brothers Jimmy, Dinos, Giorgos, Vassilis and Leonidas collected titles galore in the 1930s. Certainly beats the hell out of the Nevilles. The team was so successful with the five brothers leading the attack that the team earned the nickname ‘Thrylos’ meaning Legend, which they retain to this day.

The club would keep up this level of success with relentless predictability for many years until the late 1980s when they went an unprecedented nine seasons without a league title. This period coincided with George Koskotas owning the club and while times were miserable on the pitch, they were no better off it and in 1988 Koskotas was arrested for embezzlement after some eagle-eye noticed $130m had gone missing.

Although he was released from prison in 2001 after serving 12 years of a 25-year sentence for embezzlement, forgery and obstruction of justice felonies, Koskotas is still not allowed to leave the country and has to report to an Athens police precinct twice a month.

After a new owner came in things began to look up in the mid 1990s and the regular flow of championships began again as their so-called decade of dominance started. Since 1997 the only year the championship was not won by Olympiacos was in 2004 when Panathinaikos spoiled a potential perfect ten.

This period of dominance is fairly representative of the histories of both Olympiacos and the Greek championship as Thrylos have won more titles than their nearest rivals put together. The all-time record reads Olympiacos (35), Panathinaikos (19) and AEK Athens (11). They have also sprayed the ouzo on 22 occasions when lifting the Greek Cup.

In recent years the club have attempted to spread their wings somewhat in terms of their squad and in 2004 they signed probably their most famous ever player when noted cheat and World Cup winner Rivaldo arrived at the Karaiskákis Stadium to help the club stay at the top.

See below as Lomana Lua Lua, once of Newcastle and Portsmouth, scores a screamer for Olympiacos against their Eternal Enemies Panathanaikos earlier this year. More from us tomorrow pop pickers so don’t go away.

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