Emotional Hadzidiakos on Baldock: “The hardest week of my career – He was a very good friend of mine”

An interview with the Danish media “tipsbladet.dk” was granted by Pantelis Hatzidiakos.

In an emotionally charged atmosphere, the international defender of Copenhagen spoke about the sudden loss of his friend George Baldockrevealed how he and his teammates learned the tragic news, one day before the big game against England at “Wembley”, while also referring to how our National Team managed to turn all this into two victories, playing for him as well !

In detail what he said:



“Psychologically this was the most difficult week of my career as a football player. We had to face something awful. Less than 24 hours after the England game, we learned that one of our teammates had passed away.

George was a very good friend of mine. We’ve been on vacation together. I knew him as a player and as a person, he was a great guy. He gave something special to the team. He came from England. He didn’t grow up in Greece and bring this particular style. He used to tell us that it didn’t matter who we were playing with, we were just going to do it. Many times he put the team before his health. Many times he played with painkillers and was doing great”.

On how he found out about the tragic event: “Right after training, we were all in the dressing room and our captain got a message. He could not speak for ten minutes. Wasn’t 100% sure and had to wait for confirmation. Then he told us. Everything happened so fast. We found out immediately after training and the day before the England game.”.

For the great victory of our national team over England: “To win a game at Wembley is fantastic. I think George gave us a hand from up there and helped us score the winning goal. In a way, it was a lucky goal. It made us happy and moved us. Then the captain brought us George’s shirt. We realized that football does not have much value. There were so many emotions in this very hard week for us.

And the Ireland game was just as important for us. You could tell from the last few minutes. There was a lot of fatigue from the England game, the travel and the news. But I have to say that we have a fantastic team that is united.”

“Football took second place for us. We were told that it was not possible to change the date because the program was not… coming out. I think this is not healthy. In such circumstances you can get injured, because you haven’t slept well and you can be affected by something like that. It’s hard to play after 24 hours.

Finally, we all sat together. I said, maybe it was good because we played 12 against 11. He was with us and gave us that extra something that we needed. We were good. This event brought us closer together and we wanted to win for him. This victory will go down in the history books. It was our first at Wembley!”.

FC Kobenhavn-gr?ker pavirket af tragedie: ‘En realges god ven’ #sldk https://t.co/PgvEqHjzUW

— tipsbladet.dk (@tipsbladet) October 22, 2024