Panathinaikos: “We demand sanctions, for the Federation to take a stand for what happened at SEF”

More specifically, a few days ago it became known that the first – after the era of the Covid 19 pandemic – Board of Directors of the EFOEPA (Hellenic Philatelic Federation of Table Tennis), which was held in a room of the SEF on 25/2, was invaded by the President of Amateur Olympiakos, Michalis Kountouris, the coach of the Department, George Christoforakis and other people in order to “protest” because their request to postpone the matches of the Intercollegiate Championship of A1 scheduled for the two days 11-12/3 was not accepted and in which Olympiacos will face Panathinaikos for the title of Greek Champion.

The reason why Olympiacos is asking for the postponement of the games scheduled for those dates is because its foreign athletes have chosen to participate in an international paid tournament on the same days and will therefore not be able to be in Greece.

According to what became known, the attitude of the people of Olympiakos at the Board of the Federation “escaped” from the limits of “protest” and took the form of threats, intimidation and verbal violence towards the President and the other members of the Board of the Federation.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that Olympiacos has requested a postponement in the sport in question in recent months, after last year’s season it had requested two more postponements due to Covid cases in the team, with its request being accepted on one of the two times, while this year he asked for a postponement for the first two days of the championship, with his request being accepted.

Therefore, the matches must be postponed as many times as Olympiacos wishes, regardless of whether such a thing is provided for in the Regulations or not, in order to compete fully and have the result it wants.

Unfortunately, all of the above sad events happened in the SEF hall, which is the seat of the National Team and the venue of the sport. It is truly questionable how members of a team’s Board of Directors – including its President – coaches and others literally invade the place where the Federation’s Board of Directors is held – which is known not to be allowed – without anyone stopping them.

Therefore, the issue of security of the specific area for the sport in question is automatically raised. Even more so, if it is taken into account that the Director of the Stadium of Peace and Friendship is Christina Tsiligiri, who was a member of the Board of Directors of Amateur Olympiakos and has repeatedly expressed herself with disparaging and sometimes provocative and insulting characterizations of our Association.

And as if all of the above was not enough, a few hours ago Amateur Olympiacos officially took responsibility for what came to light with a statement posted on its official website and in which it admitted that representatives of its Management and “active members” of the Association were present at the meeting of the Board of Directors of EFOEPA because they simply wanted to hear live the reasoning behind the Federation’s decision not to grant a postponement!!!

Indeed, for the first time we hear members of the Board of Directors of an Association and “active” members of the Administration attending the meeting of the Board of Directors of a Federation, since the meetings of the Boards of Federations are not “public”, in order to hear the rationale of a decision that had been made one month ago!!!