The entire interview of Yannis Alafouzou on bwinSPORT FM 94.6

Rainy, but also revealing was the Yannis Alafouzos speaking to News Bulletin 247, two days after the conclusion of the championship. Its major shareholder PAE Panathinaikos speaking to Hello Tsuchika he directly accused AEK and Dimitris Melissanidis of stealing the championship, while he spoke of conditions of unfair competition leaving clear points and the attitude of the rest of the teams in the playoffs.

The strongman of the “trefoil” referred to the background of the case of cases in Panathinaikos before the derby with Olympiacos, while he accused the president of EPO, Taki Baltakobut also the head of KED, Steve Bennett, for their manipulations. He also talked about dependent teams that do not favor Panathinaikos unlike other teams and added that the government does not show the will to fight corruption in Greek football.

Of course, he did not fail to talk about the competitive part by characterizing successful year for Panathinaikos and his excellent relationship and collaboration with Ivan Jovanovic. Yes, yes announced 3-4 key signings before the start of the team’s pre-season for the new season and was optimistic about the club’s future, adding that PAE is completely debt-free.

“Unfair competition, AEK stole the championship”

Yiannis Alafouzos directly accused AEK of stealing the championship, citing unfair competition conditions. In particular, he emphasized that the “Union” knowingly used players who had coronavirus in the Leoforos derby, as a result of which a wave of cases broke out among the “greens”. At the same time, he talked about extreme refereeing with references to Dabanovic, Diamantopoulos, but also the case of the fight with Atromitos.

“Starting from the most recent events, when we played AEK 3-4 of their players had Covid. They had hidden it from us. There is no longer a protocol, but we should be told. Unfortunately we got stuck there with Covid. We are the only team doing daily PCR, this time it happened that many of our players got stuck. We had 16 cases of football players and a large part of the coaching staff. When the problem arose, we informed the Super League. There is a provision that provides for the possibility of postponement. We went and told them and while we were discussing Wednesday, which was also a bit absurd, they probably suggested Tuesday, they came and told us to play Tuesday. That’s funny. There was a behind-the-scenes agreement between the playoff teams, in which AEK took the lead. We were told that we were playing on Monday and we were all stunned. All this was wrong, unacceptable and created extreme conditions of unfair competition. In the playoffs we don’t have any allies, while other teams do and you know what I mean».

“I called the coach and he said ‘one day won’t make a difference’. He said we were ready to play and he didn’t want to spoil the mental momentum the players had. I told him that ‘if you insist that we go on Monday, we go on Monday’. The differences would be funny if we played on Tuesday or Wednesday. They endangered the health of our football players. I remember that Ganea had complications and is still not playing football. Everything that happened was unfair and heavy, but unfortunately that’s how Greek football works».

“They are a team that stole games with refereeing. We had extreme referees, we baptized drunken foreign referees and we had Diamantopoulos blow the whistle, who every time he blows the whistle, blows in favor of AEK. Every time there is an alteration. Do you remember Dabanovic? We had an extreme arbitration, an arbitration extreme. Unfortunately, we had such phenomena. Although AEK undoubtedly had a good team, they stole the championship».

“I can’t believe that Baltakos is still at Panathinaikos”

The powerful man of PAE described Takis Baltako and Steve Bennett as a bad combination, while he spoke about the dependence of some groups on some big ones. In fact, he emphasized that, with regret, he does not see the government’s willingness to clean up Greek football.

“It’s a bad combination. Mr. Baltakos was from Panathinaikos, I can’t believe he is still with his behavior. He and Mr. Bennett created these conditions in the Greek league. We also saw Mr. Sidiropoulos who made extreme arbitrations. Even in the play outs we saw extreme refereeing where a penalty was whistled in the tenth minute of stoppage time in a game with seven minutes of stoppage time. We saw extreme game delay in Levadeiakos-Panitolikos. This largely determined who would go down».

“There are groups with direct dependence on others, who will give matches to others and kill with us. Not all groups are corrupt, but there are many that will not survive unless they submit to the demands of the powerful. This has been happening for years in Greek football. This is where Panathinaikos fielded the 2004 National team and could not win the championship».

“There is no governmental inclination to do anything in Greek football. There is omerta and compromise. We will fight in every way so that we do not have the phenomena of this year. We will at least try to limit it».

“The Greek league has been deeply undermined. There are excellent Greek referees, but when they have people above them who will stop the games for them… The games for a referee are their life. When you tell them that if you don’t whistle like this you won’t whistle or become an international, then you understand that the situation is capitulation».

“If we compare this year’s arbitrations with previous years, they were better. But there were examples, either with bars because we didn’t want to play that day, but also games where there were possible alterations in an artful way. And Clattenberg, but especially Bennett this year was a big disappointment. And especially Mr. Baltakos who is the president. It was impressive the conversation I had with him the day that some journalists who are close to a certain group about the Poles. He didn’t know anything, he told me. I told him. And then the whole handling was wrong and miraculously who refereed? Mr. Diamantopoulos. These circumstances were far from accidental».

“The debate about professional arbitration is dead, I hope it will be resurrected. The holistic study has not been implemented. The EPO is deeply sick, the way the president is chosen is wrong. The EPs come out with difficulty and fight superhumanly for the teams to survive».

“Excellent relationship with Jovanovic, by 15/6 we want 3-4 key transfers”

A special mention was also made in the racing part. Yiannis Alafouzos described the season as successful by once again unleashing his arrows on Dimitris Melissanidis, while he described his relationship and collaboration with Ivan Yovanovitch as excellent. In fact, he announced faster reinforcements for Panathinaikos ahead of the new season.

“We have an excellent relationship with the coach, we talk 2-3 times a week on the phone. I trust my teammates and I always try to do what the coach asks of me. THE weight he had this year was huge and if there were not some unacceptable refereeing and also Covid, which was a matter of misfortune and insensitivity of the team that stuck us and the other teams in the playoffs, maybe we would be talking differently. There was no team that liked Panathinaikos, but we know who was the leader in this dishonest transaction. Mr. Melissanidis! A team does not belong to one person, it belongs to its fans. We have always had good relations with AEK, they have been relegated because they did not pay their debts like we did».

“I congratulated Mr. Ivanovic because we were first and we all saw how we ended up second. He changed the team and brought it back to the level it should be. We agreed to make immediate transfers to strengthen the team. Our coach tried to protect the interests of Panathinaikos. He didn’t want to bring 20 players, even if I could bring. And as a matter of timing, we were late in making some transfers. With any delays, however, the team was first in so many competitions. If someone told us last year that the team would be second and lose the league due to unfair competition conditions, we would be talking about progress».

“Planning has not started now, but after January. We have settled on some things and we want by June 15th to have done the 3-4 critical transfers we want to do and then do some more».

“No more debt in PAE”

Yiannis Alafouzos, finally, referred to how he became a major shareholder in PAE, in the absence of “teammates” in the effort he made for the Panathenaic Alliance. He admitted that he himself made mistakes in the first years when he was lucky with the team, while he clarified that now PAE is “clean” of debt.

“I never imagined that I would find myself the owner of Panathinaikos. When we made the attempt of the Panathenaic Alliance, while we did research and expected 100,000 members from our 2 million fans, which Olympiacos has approximately (the next teams are half of us) the attempt was not successful and I found myself in a condition that did not exist no one to help. There were debts of 60 million euros and a roster and with the contracts that were there we reached a debt of 100 million euros which was difficult to deal with. I made mistakes too, we had a disastrous year in the Stramaccioni period, we dissolved everything that year… Today there are no such debts, 120 million euros of liabilities have been paid. We are talking about a great effort, very bloody. It was like having one hand behind my back. An entrepreneur can also have difficult years and not have the ability to pay 30-40 million euros in one year».

“No more debts. We have no obligation to players, managers, coaches or teams. Everything is in order, there are some regulations in the tax office that are followed normally».