Giannis Diakogiannis, journalist, writer, radio commentator and television sports presenter, died at the age of 91
Giannis Diakogiannis, journalist, writer, radio commentator and television sports presenter, died at the age of 91. He was the legendary sports voice of ERT.
He was considered by many to be the top of the genre, due to his extensive knowledge of classical sports as well as football, his depth of broadcasting and the smoothness of his style.
He was born in Athens where he was involved in sports since his teenage years, with a particular weakness in athletics. He studied music in France, but journalism eventually won him over. He covered many top events with his coverage, including football World Cups (starting with the 1954 one in Switzerland and ending with the 1998 one in France), international matches and world championships in athletics, final matches of inter-club European football events (such as the Cup Champions in 1971 between Ajax and Panathinaikos) and others. In 2004 he was a commentator in the matches of the National men’s football team in the Pan-European football championship when our representative group also won the trophy.
From September 1966 to 1983 he was the main presenter of the weekly sports television show “Sports Sunday” (originally “Sports News”), while in September 1969 he presented the 9th European Athletics Championship, which was held at the “Georgios Karaiskakis” Stadium and was the first broadcast of athletics competitions by a Greek television crew.
He also worked at a private sports reporting center as a journalism teacher. Among his works stand out the four-volume “100 Years of Football” (Militos, 2006), “60 Years of the World Cup” (Livanis, 1990), “The Great Forms of Sports” (Kaktos, 1979) etc. He was also a producer of music radio shows. His daughter (adopted) was the journalist Rika Vaiani.
He was the first to be honored for his contribution in general with the “Eleni Vlachou” award in 2003, as a journalist of “Neon”. He is probably the only Greek sports journalist whose surname was included in the lyrics of a song, specifically in “The match begins” composed and performed by Loukianos Kilaidonis in 1979.
In January 2017 Diakogiannis publicly admitted for the first time that he is a fan of Panathinaikos, at an event of the Municipality of Byron for the presentation of the book of the former football player Dimitris Theofanis. Diakogiannis declared: “I am Panathinaikos, I am Athenian, I am Panathinaikos. I have met Apostolos Nikolaidis”.
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I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years, and my work has been featured on many different news websites. I am also an author, and my work has been published in several books. I specialize in opinion writing, and I often write about current events and controversial topics. I am a very well-rounded writer, and I have a lot of experience in different areas of journalism. I am a very hard worker, and I am always willing to put in the extra effort to get the job done.
