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Life is moments.
Miracles happen.
If you believe,
you have faith in what you do,
you are committed and you work hard,
it’s a matter of time.
The sea of Piraeus
She is the sweetest of all
Olympiacos started with a dream to have a team that represents Piraeus.
Piraeus wanted an identity and Olympiacos became this,
became a symbol of the city.
The flag became the symbol of the working class.
It represented for them, the people of Piraeus,
their pride and their values.
My Piraeus, my Piraeus,
With your Saronic gulf
You have your pride
Your Olympiacos
Red is for the passion.
And white symbolizes purity and fair play.
I believe Olympiacos and Piraeus are one.
For decades, when we talk about Piraeus,
we mean Olympiacos.
When we talk about Olympiacos, we don't just mean Piraeus;
we mean all of Greece and all the Greeks abroad
who unite under the colors of Olympiacos.
However here in Piraeus, at the port,
Olympiacos is the dominant point of reference.
I believe, I really believe, that half of Greeks support Olympiacos.
These people live football with passion, they love Olympiacos a lot
and when a player plays here, he must feel these colors.
We live through football.
We know that football is a tool of
education, unity, celebration, joy.
But again, here in Piraeus, it’s part of our lives.
We cannot say any word without talking about the game.
It’s incredible.
From the coffee, till the dinner,
they will speak about the game.
Our history in Greece is full of trophies and full of success.
We have forty-seven league titles
and all the other clubs have forty, together.
Success is great, in Greece it’s something that we enjoy,
but we wanted the European step.
And I think that this is what Mr Marinakis changed.
When we took over Olympiacos back in 2010
I started talking about Europe.
My father, his friends, my family,
they were big supporters of Olympiacos.
I started accompanying my father since I was four, five years old.
Then, you like it,
every week you look forward to watching your team
and seeing friends from the stadium
and also attending conversations.
Olympiacos has been, many times, the champion,
the best team, by far,
and what was missing was some European joy.
When I was a player I knew that it was crucial to win the title.
And this is a culture here.
When I came back as a director and of course
through the leadership of Mr Marinakis,
we tried to recruit people who have this mindset,
at least to improve in Europe.
And of course to inspire our kids, to inspire our players
and of course obviously our fans to believe in our project.
This is our duty, this is our responsibility,
to not only give them a dream,
but at least constantly telling them something.
Of course I was the one to believe it,
to believe in this dream.
And then it was one, it was two, it was three, four, five
and then everybody around believes in it.
You always have certain dreams in mind,
and this was a big dream.
He constantly told me, "I want the team to advance and do something great,"
and I saw the vision he had for this team.
Qualifying for Europe is not easy,
and especially when there are matches early in the season,
the team needs
to prepare properly and be ready for these games.
We see that in recent years, this has become increasingly difficult.
I remember we had a new coach, and there were new players,
so we hadn't fully bonded yet.
Nevertheless, we played well.
Everyone pushed themselves a bit harder
to secure our place in the Europa League group stage.
I believe we did a good job, both for ourselves and for the club,
which is important to be competing at that level.
Of course, fans of Olympiacos are known
to want only wins and I know winning is in their DNA.
They are very enthusiastic and
also crazy about football.
I believe that anyone who is a fan of Olympiacos understands that
their whole life depends on what the team does.
They are passionate; many of them we call crazy in a good way.
The fans of Olympiacos are incredible.
They are fans I have great care and gratitude for
being able to defend the colors of Olympiacos
and give it my all on the field for them.
Gate 7 is the most passionate section;
it is the shield and the spear of Olympiacos.
Every Olympiacos fan has passed through Gate 7,
and later on, they may go to other gates when they grow up with their children,
but Gate 7 is the school for every supporter.
We knew that we were capable of doing something great.
But when? How?
This is a tough question, because this is our challenge every day.
Yes, it was a tough group;
we had teams from England and Germany,
and we said, "Let's take it step by step,
game by game."
We wanted to start a new effort with a new coach,
and that in itself was difficult, until we found our footing
generally, as a team, there were various problems:
new players, some poor results, and I think that was
the biggest difficulty - that we were starting something new.
The situation was not good at all.
The team hadn't built up its mentality yet;
Olympiacos fans are experienced
and deeply involved with the team; they don't view it superficially.
They think about the team 24 hours a day,
always keeping it in their minds,
even before they sleep and while they are asleep.
They know what is happening with the team and what to expect.
We always support the team and were not disappointed.
We understand that to reach the top, there are certainly challenges.
We are in the process of building a new team,
and we saw this as part of that journey.
The main reasons that I wanted to get more involved with
the team, one was Europe
and the second was our academies
because I wanted to see a lot of young Greek footballers do well.
The development of someone young is a development
which takes place at sporting level,
but which also happens on a human level because you have to adapt.
It depends on the club you're in,
and the player's personality
has to match the club he plays for.
Wearing the Olympiacos shirt is not an easy thing
when you are in the first team, because we are talking about a club
that wants all the time to win titles.
So it’s also about the mentality
and that’s something that you have to build from a young age.
I have been an Olympiacos fan since I was a kid,
since I started playing football and watching Olympiacos.
I would go to the stadium, and when I was younger,
I would say yes, I want to play one day for Olympiacos.
For me, football is my whole life.
As long as I can remember myself,
I was either with a ball at school or outside with my friends.
I always wanted to have a ball with me, I always had my football boots,
and whatever I did revolved around football.
Our family isn't just supporters of Olympiacos, right?
Due to my position, it's something more;
No matter how impersonal and professional
football has become, a business.
It's our family.
You didn't happen to be at a championship of Dad's.
No I didn’t.
I hope to experience it myself now.
I used to play as a goalkeeper,
and my brothers would shoot at me the most.
But I always wanted to get in and take some shots myself.
Many times, they wouldn’t let me,
so most of the time, I just shot on my own.
Christos was playing as the goalkeeper, and we used to tease him,
taking shots and not letting him out of the goal.
That's how I believe it all started.
Only Vasilis, especially, had broken my nose 4 or 5 times
because he had a very powerful shot.
I would sit here as the goalkeeper
and I would have a nosebleed and I would go inside crying.
And you kept crying.
Yes, there was no other option since we kept taking shots.
We needed someone in goal for that.
Through the Olympiacos academy, I grew both as a footballer
and as a person and as an individual.
I developed in all aspects.
I believe I became better at everything;
it taught me many things about my behavior,
and I think I evolved more in terms of character
than in my football skills.
We had won the league the year before, 2022-2023
after seven years without a league,
so it was really important for us to go back-to-back for titles.
The next thing was for us to go as far as we could
in the Youth League competition.
To be honest, at first, we wanted to at least reach the last 16.
Because we know that after that the competition gets huge
with great clubs
who are pillars in Europe.
We wanted to get to that point, but then...
progressively we realized that we might have some chances
to better represent Olympiacos.
It was an emotional day because it was
one day before the anniversary of the tragedy of Gate 7.
I was...
14 or 15 years old at the time, and I was inside the stadium.
Our Olympiacos had just beaten AEK
in a so-called derby.
When we were leaving to celebrate,
the exit doors were partially closed,
which caused the first people to fall down the stairs.
The crowd behind them, not seeing what was happening in front,
pushed forward in their excitement to get out of the stadium,
resulting in a pile-up
where many people tragically lost their lives
due to asphyxiation, mainly.
Every year, those days the club tries to remember and honor
the victims of Gate 7.
“Brothers, you are alive and you guide us.”
I remember that we had a lot of emotion before the game
and we wanted to go through also,
honoring the victims of Gate 7.
We were preparing ourselves properly for that game.
We also knew we would be playing at Karaiskakis Stadium,
which was a dream for everyone from the Academy to
represent Olympiacos at Karaiskakis on a European level was fantastic.
Playing at our home ground helped us quite a bit,
even though it was a very strong opponent, the match went to penalties.
We were saying it would be a pity to lose it on penalties.
We had played really well, even with ten players,
and created many chances, so we were thinking,
"Why not? Why shouldn't this happen?"
Honestly, we have very mature players in this team.
I am impressed to see children like them, because they're still kids,
with enough maturity
to prepare for their matches
to tackle competitions
and especially sequence of penalty
while being composed and focused on what they're going to do.
It truly was a surprise for me to see this amount of concentration.
The feelings after the penalties, I remember the celebration,
I remember how the kids were enjoying the moment.
We achieved our first small goal,
which was to advance to the Round of 16,
the furthest the U19 team had gone up to that point.
As time went on, we were looking even further ahead.
I mean, just a year ago,
we were playing here in Greece against familiar teams,
and suddenly we eliminated Inter.
It was fantastic!
Of course, it was the first time that Mr Marinakis, the President,
came to the dressing room and
he was the one that said to the team that
“I believe that you can go all the way and win the title.”
The Conference League started from the need
to have more teams participating in our competitions
beyond the qualifying rounds
and to enable many teams to be competitive.
A competition in which everyone can dream
and everyone can excel. That's how it started.
Our hopes were always that it becomes an interesting,
competitive football competition,
but we didn’t even hope that
it would be so super successful as it is now.
The Conference League a year before was won by West Ham
and some of the management of West Ham said that,
some of the fans said that they prefer winning this competition
than staying in the Premier League,
which tells you everything, how important it is to win
an international, or European...
but this is actually a global competition.
It has indeed become a competition that can make the whole world dream.
It's true football. It's really amazing,
sometimes I prefer watching Conference League matches
to Champions League matches.
There are rules in football that say a team performs well
when it is stable, has the same coach and can achieve everything.
Clearly, there are exceptions that confirm the rule,
and one of them occurred last year.
Olympiacos changed coaches multiple times,
starting with Martínez, then Carvalhal,
followed by Silaidopoulos for one game, and finally
the current coach, Mendilibar.
Everything went by really quickly.
Usually I have more time to think, but when they approached me
they told me I had to answer that day.
So, I didn’t have much time to think and it was instant
and in no time we decided to come over.
I have a lot of respect for him.
He’s crazy enough to keep dreaming
and also like a challenge,
like difficult matches
and of course, like to win.
José Luis Mendilibar came to Greece and to Olympiacos
after leaving Sevilla, but he didn't leave Sevilla without a title;
he left after winning the Europa League.
I am a manager that has changed very little,
and I mean since I started managing.
I think that I am a guy that is good for the...
for the player.
I get along with him and I understand the player.
And I believe that in the same way, the player also supports me.
In the first moments, I saw a very serious person,
first of all, he was professional in his work and cared about the players.
Additionally, the team was significantly strengthened
during the January transfer window when Horta and Carmo joined players
who made a substantial impact, along with Chiquinho.
I am convinced that the ones who win the games are the players.
Not me, the manager. I can guide them.
I can give them direction, but that’s it.
That’s where it ends.
Once they walk onto the field
they are the ones that will be playing
and the ones that win or lose the matches.
We played against a good Hungarian team,
which wins the league in Hungary almost every year.
And it was a very complicated game.
The truth is that
we didn’t play a great match.
Sometimes
it helps you to play better in the future,
when you win even if you don’t play well.
We didn’t play wonderfully,
but the outcome gave us that confidence that we could continue to accomplish,
and continue to do the things that the manager demands of us
and I think that helped us a lot.
In Budapest, we were more comfortable than in the first match.
We were much better as a team;
the coach had understood what he wanted from us,
and we were a team that, although
we had only been with the coach for a little while,
he had communicated his desires to us.
In my life,
I was born an Olympiacos fan.
In elementary school, from the first grade,
most of the kids were Olympiacos fans.
The local grocer, who was also an Olympiacos fan,
took me to Karaiskaki Stadium for my first game,
Since then, Olympiacos took root in my heart.
On the date I got married in 1970,
I told the priest to schedule the ceremony for 8:00 PM
because Olympiacos had a match, and it might go into extra time.
So, I went to watch Olympiacos,
then went home, changed, and went to the church.
I don’t think I could be anything other than an Olympiacos fan,
Olympiacos is an idea. It is a legend. It is a history.
The good thing is that Olympiacos currently has a President
who, like us, lives for Olympiacos
and always wants the team to be a champion.
My father, he never put any pressure on me
to follow him in football.
He did it in his own way,
letting me make my choices.
He was the one that, from the very beginning,
taught me to take responsibility and to...
work hard.
And at the end of the day,
that it’s up to you,
up to me to perform
and make the difference.
This night was a nightmare for us.
After that match it was as if a family member of each player had died.
It was one of the worst, let’s say, results
that we ever had in Karaiskakis Stadium.
The outcome was horrible.
The way we played wasn’t as bad.
I think they didn’t take many shots and, yet, scored a lot of goals.
They scored four goals.
But I don’t think they did so much
to make us lose with that score.
It was truly a shock because no one expected
this to be the obstacle we would face.
It was a very sad moment because those of us
who have been here for many years
always hoped that this would be the year we would do well.
We had endured many disappointments
in years when we believed we would succeed,
so the first thought that crossed our minds was,
"Not again, not like this."
After every match, we are all together and we have a meeting.
The President, the staff, the sports director.
Ok, when we lose, we are not so many.
When we win, a lot of people come, this happens in life.
So I remember that night, the agent of our coach Mr Mendilibar was here
and the President went to his table and said to him,
“I want to speak to you and the coach.”
We had a discussion about the future of Olympiacos.
They were talking about twenty minutes.
I said, “I think that we should renew your contract
for another year and a half.”
I said, “Ok.”
I think this was the message to everybody.
“I don’t care about the loss, I don’t care about the score.”
We will recover. And I’m optimistic.
When we arrived in Serbia, we crossed the fans of Maccabi.
They were cheering,
"You’re going to take five more”, you know?
And nobody talked. We were all focused in our job.
And I felt that and I said, “Oh, very good”.
I can see that the players were focused.
I saw it as a revenge match for the result that happened on our home field.
When we stepped onto the field and saw some fans waiting for us there,
I remembered that the journey had been very difficult.
I understood that those fans believed in us, in a comeback,
and that they thought we could win the match.
We stepped onto the field with the extra motivation from the coach,
who had been talking to us all week, saying,
"If you are who I want and who I know, you will be able to succeed.”
When we went to Serbia
and saw the Israelis warming up before the match,
it was as if they were going for a stroll,
thinking, "Well, we won by 4 goals in Athens,
we'll score another four here and leave."
This happens to those who are arrogant and underestimate their opponents;
the Israelis paid for that.
Well, during the break you start thinking that you could go through.
But with the play-off being a draw you start thinking more like
“Don’t let them score, don’t let them score, don’t let-”
And they did score a goal.
I could see the Israelis
looking at a different Olympiacos in the stadium, unable to react.
That was when we were all shouting,
while some were saying to take it easy and hold on,
no, now, now we need more and more,
because at that moment they didn't believe it.
As soon as the cross came in, I thought,
"Oh no, what is he trying to do? Why isn't he just heading it?"
Scoring using the scissor kick,
I mean, for a long time I developed the reflex in my body,
if the ball was high in the sky, I will score using this technique.
I had the confidence that the team were playing really well,
and I was thinking that we could qualify,
and I was thinking that we could qualify, and that we could score a goal,
that we could win the play-off without going to penalties.
A good football player can win a match at any moment.
The only thing we were afraid of was a bad moment, some misfortune;
the team's capability inspired confidence.
It was a bombshell.
I think nothing like this had ever happened before in Europe.
A team losing at home by three goals
and then surviving the play-offs.
That proves to the player
that there is always a possibility.
Nobody believed.
We had only fifty-six fans that came with us.
I don’t know if they were believing, but they were there
and they saw the miracle themselves.
I really believed.
We had some bad results,
but we had a good team.
And I remember that, you will see it over there,
this ‘Never Never Give Up’ sign.
I was talking with one of my personal assistants, and I said
“You know you have to order a hundred pieces.”
We need to give all the players, the technical staff,
one piece of ‘Never Never Give Up’ to put in their houses,
their offices, wherever they sit when they go home,
when they wake up, wherever.
And of course, afterwards, better results came.
I remember we were celebrating like little kids,
Yes I remember celebrating with them after the game,
everyone had a smile on their faces, everyone happy.
We called the President after the game.
That match I can say is one of the best
and memorable games in my football history.
It is a match I will take with me for the rest of my life,
it was really tough and we achieved something
that was considered a miracle.
Everyone was saying that we could not stand a chance, but we believed
that we could not stand a chance,
but we believed and we left Serbia qualified.
- Olympiacos! Olympiacos! - Olympiacos! Olympiacos!
Olympiacos was doing tryouts, and I said, "Guys, let’s go."
You did four tryouts and you did three, anyway, you did the tryouts.
I remember the last tryout; it must have been.
We were 9 years old, and it was pouring rain;
I remember it was like a flood. We kept on with the training;
we had already started, how many?
There must have been about 300 kids for the tryouts,
and if I remember correctly,
they took 4 or 5, somewhere around there.
Every day when I finished work, he would ask me,
"Did they call you?
Did we get into Olympiacos? Did we get into Olympiacos?"
You had a lot of anxiety, as soon as I finished work, he kept asking me,
"Did they call you? Did they call you?"
I told him not to rush because it was December,
and Christmas was coming and all that, holidays,
and anyway,
on January 1st, the technical director, Mr. Amanatidis,
called me and said that I was starting with Olympiacos.
And everyone was very happy,
especially you because you had been waiting for it.
Also, we are all Olympiacos fans,
so you went crazy with joy.
Your dream.
The first thing I remember vividly about the match against Lens is that
I didn't play because I got sick the night before.
And I remember it was maybe the worst moment of my life
because it was the biggest match I'd ever played up to that point.
I was thinking that if something went wrong and we didn't advance,
it would really upset me that I wasn't there to help my team.
I believe strongly in memories.
Success has to do with togetherness.
From the guy that cleans the facility,
the guys that sell merchandise outside the stadium,
the chairman, the owner, everybody should be part of it.
And it is very important that everybody believes
and has faith.
And of course, what is important is to be capable to do it
because even if you have all the goodwill of the world
but you’re not capable,
you will find it much harder.
And what I have said to our players,
“What you need to realize is that you are able to do it,
you are capable of doing it,
you can do it.
So it’s not me, that I’m trying to encourage you, or to inspire you.
The leader here is yourself.
The god is you.
You can do it.”
When your mind’s recalling the memories of succeeding,
it’s always easier for you to shoot a penalty
or to win the penalty shootout.
Well, being in the Champions League quarter-finals,
we knew we were the first Greek team to achieve this.
We had seen the other opponents
and realized that things were getting much tougher;
we weren't fooling ourselves about that.
I believe at the beginning, as we didn't have the experience
of European matches, we were a bit...
we lacked confidence and felt some pressure.
However, as we started to play well, our confidence grew.
I specifically remember with Bayern during the warm-up,
I was saying,
"There's no way this team is going to lose here today."
There was no chance of that.
From the warm-up, I could see that I wasn't afraid at all;
I thought, "As we are right now, there's no way we won't win this."
Bayern is a giant.
We knew that it would not be easy.
But it was the process of growing from the games that we had played before
that gave us that confidence.
And you can see it in our body language,
how confident we were before going outside
and how confident we were inside the game.
There’s something that we say all the time to our players that,
after scoring a goal, the two minutes after the goal,
scoring or suffering, are the most important minutes,
because the concentration of the team that scores
or the concentration of the team that had suffered the goal,
it’s a little bit unbalanced.
So it’s a good way for us to be really focused and try to score
in the next phase, or in the next minutes.
We were looking at each other in disbelief saying,
"Has this really happened?!"
We had scored three goals in just eight minutes,
and we didn’t know what was happening ourselves.
Okay, we knew who we were playing against,
we knew what kind of team they were.
And maybe that second half
was the half I will remember for the rest of my life; I mean,
we really suffered in the second half.
And that's part of the game
when you play against such a team and you’re winning 0-3
in such a competition, facing players like that.
You knew it wouldn't be an easy ride.
We showed that we can beat anyone.
We had many fans with us against Bayern.
They were cheering and really didn’t stop for a minute.
My family was there too,
and we were saying,
"Guys, we’re in the semifinals!" Even we couldn’t believe it.
Of course we were proud to reach the final four and
be part of such a great competition.
It was a great chance for us to write history.
I have an idea,
and I’ve had this since I started coaching 30 years ago,
this idea of pressing high, of playing on the opposite side,
of playing from outside,
of creating a lot of crosses.
And this idea hasn’t changed in 30 years.
Nowadays, football is about wanting to start the play from the goal,
of risking very often during the passes, even to your own goalkeeper,
that when they steal the ball from you, you are near the box.
And if you get it right, then it’s perfect,
everything works out tremendously... But if you hesitate,
every hesitation creates more and more mistakes.
And it is very hard to get back from that.
I don’t even really count the goalkeepers when we are training.
I always only count the field players.
The goalkeepers, when I need them [whistles]
I get two goalkeepers to come over and that’s it, no more.
I don’t pay much attention to the goalkeepers.
Yes, it’s true- Well, it’s not fully true, because
it really bothers me when they don’t grab it.
It really bothers me when they clear the ball.
It really bothers me if they won’t come out
when you have someone standing 1.90m tall.
Those things [snarls] get me-
Everyone is always talking about big goalkeepers,
and then I say to the goalkeeper coaches
“What is the point of having a big goalkeeper
if he doesn’t step out of the goal line?
It doesn’t matter if he is big or small.”
So, these are things that-
I said before that I don’t bother with goalkeepers
but I only bother in a bad way, usually, not to--
If he stops a penalty,
well that’s what he’s supposed to do, to stop the penalty.
He is the person who made me
defend the goalposts of Olympiacos,
so he is the one who started this whole part of my career.
As it always is, the atmosphere is electric.
The whole crowd,
not just Gate 7,
but the entire Karaiskakis is a very strong home ground
with a rich football culture. At the same time, it’s a powerful stadium.
The opponent feels it, and above all,
we give wings to the feet of our players.
When you are playing only one match,
you have to win.
Whether you are doing badly or well, you need to take risks.
In a play-off, you don’t need to take as many risks.
And that is how it was.
But the joy of the game is something I don’t want to lose,
and that’s how we started.
Well, to be honest, at 3-0, it felt really nice,
And I was thinking it would be great if it could end like that.
We couldn’t keep a clean sheet and go to Turkey with a 3-0 lead,
which would have been a huge advantage for our qualification.
Nevertheless, we held on to the victory, showed a strong performance.
So, we were going to Turkey to defend the 3-2 lead
and aim to reach the semifinals.
I was really looking forward to it.
I remember back in 2019
or maybe 2020, 2021, we played in Turkey
against Fenerbahçe, and when we stepped outside,
the stadium was buzzing with fans
and I was on the bench thinking to myself
during the warm-up that there’s no way I could miss out
on playing in a match with such a crowd in the stands,
with the crowd’s cheers and whistles.
It was an incredible atmosphere.
And then life brought it full circle after a few years,
where I went to the stadium and got to play,
so I was really looking forward to it.
The support from their supporters was huge.
The noise was huge.
A lot of respect for this.
Sometimes the players prefer to play
in that sort of atmosphere,
rather than a cold atmosphere that don’t make you feel anything.
When they truly come at you for whatever reason,
that’s when you are the most in the game.
When we conceded a goal,
the players had the mental fortitude to say
“Let’s keep this going and let’s try
to maintain the score or try to get the draw.”
No just thinking:
“Oof, what have they done to us, let’s stay back.”
In that sense, the player has got that mental fortitude which...
You can tell them about, but at the end of the day
if they don’t find it themselves, it’s all worthless.
Well, at that moment, you grab a hold of whoever is next to you.
I don’t usually like to watch the penalties,
not only the ones that happen after extra time
but even the penalties during the match.
And then, well, I am not sure if it’s a case of head or tails,
of luck, of skill... Because at the end of the day...
not everything can be down to luck.
I remember that during the match in Turkey,
I was sitting behind the bench with my colleagues,
and behind me was a man I didn't know.
I had seen him many times in the stadium, but didn’t know.
So, this man comes, before the penalty shootout started,
grabbed my hand and put something in it,
saying, "Please, take this to my son."
I was confused and asked, "What is this? Who is your son?"
He replied, "My son is Tzolakis; please give this to him."
I didn't know how to get down or how to reach the pitch
where Tzolakis was; he had already gone down by the goal.
However, I ran as fast as I could, as if I had to save the world.
Suddenly I received a talisman out of nowhere.
I placed it next to my towel and my water bottle,
and I held onto it throughout the duration of our penalty kicks.
When they were taking their penalties, I would leave it there next to my towel.
I pick a point.
It could be someone in the crowd or an object, or something.
I pick a fixed point
and, usually, a batch of penalties,
during the five penalties I stare at that fixed point or at that person
or at a face, or an object, or whatever it is.
The most important thing for me was
my father's presence in the stadium.
That was the significant influence for me.
As for the talisman, well, everyone believes in something.
A week before, my mind went back to the game at our stadium
where I had conceded a penalty from my left side.
I had already decided that he wouldn’t change sides
and would take it exactly the same way,
Luckily, Tadić sent it to the right side that I chose.
If he scores, we go through immediately without taking the fifth penalty.
I catch his ball, give it to Rodinei, and say,
“Let’s go.” He responds, “We pass,”
implying that we’ve already made it.
He takes the penalty and because I’m positioned close
to the area with the goal line,
I have a clear view of whether the ball crosses the line or not.
He takes the shot, and I see that the ball hasn’t crossed the line,
so I think, “We still have more to go.”
He went to argue with the referee, trying to see if the watch
would indicate that it had crossed, saying something like “no battery”
about the watch, or something along those lines.
That’s what he told me.
In the end, it hadn’t crossed, so we continued the game.
As soon as Bonucci took the ball,
I thought, given his immense experience over all these years
and the many penalties in his career,
both in penalty shootouts and in regular play,
I instinctively felt I would dive to the same side.
Fortunately, I did, and from there we moved on.
I went and hugged my father.
As soon as we got to the locker room, I took a FaceTime call
with my mom and my brother,
and we were all incredibly emotional
because we achieved something extraordinary,
something that hasn’t been done in the 99-year history
of Olympiacos at that time.
Those were moments that will be etched in my memory for my entire life.
You know what I like from him?
We renew him when we lost 1-4 at Karaiskakis,
because we like the difficult things.
And we like to win in difficult conditions.
Yeah.
Last four!
It was chaos!
We arrived at 6:00 in the morning, and the fans were already there.
At one point, someone handed me a torch,
and I took it in my hands, and it was truly a celebration.
As I was holding the flare, Masouras was in front of me,
and after about three minutes of holding the torch away
from me so I wouldn't get burned,
Masouras started to catch fire, but he didn’t realize that I was the one
holding the torch.
I don’t know, maybe once he sees the documentary,
he’ll understand that it was me holding the flare,
and I probably burned myself a little on the hand.
I didn't expect it. If I were to reflect back five years,
I wouldn't have been able to imagine or dream
of these moments that I have experienced.
Sometimes the planets line up for a season,
you feel like nothing bad can happen to you
And it can't be explained, it's just the way it is.
I said since you made it this far,
it’s not crazy to win it.
There are only two matches left.
Two matches, yes.
We had to keep the right balance.
For me that’s the key word
about the enthusiasm to go into the final and be ready to play through the final.
And I think that the team also, after the game,
was not really big celebrations, because
we knew that after two days we have to perform
even better and to perform for something that
no other team in Greece had won before.
The Youth League is a competition we are very proud of.
It was very significant that for the first time a Greek team
came here to play in the Final Four.
It is truly impressive, and
I think it is one of the few,
if not the only, teams that had players solely
from their own country playing here.
I think that...
to share my opinion,
I'm not speaking as a general secretary but just as a fan.
my wife and kids were there, and they asked me,
"Dad, can we cheer?" I told them,
"Of course, do whatever you want, just don’t sit close to me;
go somewhere and do whatever you want."
Then I looked at them, and they were behaving like real hooligans.
When I went to watch the youth,
everybody congratulated me because
they could see the coach, they could see the technical team,
they could see the analysts, they could see the physios,
overall it was a very capable team.
They were pleasantly surprised to see a very well-organized team,
also people that really wanted to make it happen.
The final is something that we prepare,
but we were practically invited like by accident.
Because, when you look at the group at the very beginning
there are so many big teams.
So we told ourselves that we had nothing to lose
From the moment I woke up on the day of the final,
I was so eager.
I couldn't sleep the night before
because I wanted the hours to pass quickly so I could be at the stadium.
I remember we were all very focused and in high spirits;
we were ready.
I never even imagined it;
it wasn’t something I had as a dream.
It wasn’t like my dream of wanting to play for Olympiacos;
it was something I never expected to happen in my life.
I woke up in the morning thinking,
“What? I’m playing in a European final?”
But that didn’t scare or worry me, nor did it stress me out,
because we had incredible self-confidence as a team.
Our focus was to perform in the highest level and
to perform in a way that could bring the trophy back to Greece.
It’s a game that, there’s no regrets.
There’s ninety minutes
and we have to be present
and we have to live it in the best way that we can,
because after these ninety minutes, it’s history.
And we cannot take it back.
The first half,
we performed really well.
We were dominating and we were losing a lot of chances,
so I was a little bit worried,
that we had to score in these chances, it would be much easier.
I take notice of a lot of the body language
and the way that people are working,
or the way they are treating each other, the way they are talking to each other.
I felt that we were going to take the cup.
Since you made it this far, it’s not crazy to win it.
Your dream.
Ok, I was calm in the first goal,
because I knew that there was a lot of game on and
we have to be calm also for the kids too,
because if I’m more emotional than I have to be,
also it’s transmitted to the team.
2-0 after, you know, three minutes,
you start believing more.
To score a goal in the final of the Youth League that way, 0-3,
all the stars are aligning in that moment
and it was a goal that I celebrated really...
In a way that I’ve never celebrated a goal before.
I remember feeling so exhausted around the 90th minute,
my legs felt like they were done.
We had two matches in four days, both very crucial games.
As soon as I heard the referee's whistle,
I just sat down and forgot everything.
I didn’t feel tired or anything;
the only thing on my mind was
when I would go to get my medal and lift the trophy.
It was joy, endless joy!
It taught me to believe in ourselves above all
and not to be afraid of anything.
No matter who you face,
you must believe in yourself because you can achieve it.
There was a moment when UEFA gave us
a marble with all the teams that was inside the competition.
and you see teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Inter, Juventus, Bayern,
and you are the champion,
then you realise how big the achievement is.
I’m really happy and I’m really proud
of being the first Greek coach to win a European title.
Very emotional moments;
my heart swelled with pride and joy,
and the best part was when the match ended,
and he came to the stands and said, "Look where I brought you,
what I brought you to,"
and it was very nice, a really wonderful feeling.
The Youth League is won by those
who are affiliated with the big teams of Europe.
The English, some French, some Spanish
from the big Leagues, let’s say, right?
And it turns out that from the Greek League,
the Youth League Olympiacos has won against all of those players, right?
So. You say, damn, maybe we could do same?
We know that they play in one of the best leagues in Europe, the Premier League.
And we know that they are always up in the top four / top five.
We know it's going to be difficult.
Surely, we were the outsiders in that match;
we all knew it, and we went to enjoy it and do our best.
However, I want to tell you that there was one person
who was confident and kept telling us all that we would win
and that in this match, we would leave as victors.
I was absolutely convinced that we were going to win there.
That we were going to have a great match there.
I was absolutely convinced.
Why? Because I think that English football matches well
with the style of football that I want to play, I think.
I knew that all of them were against Olympiacos, they all said
Aston Villa was the favorite, and they were the favorite.
It is the team with the most investment, with the most money.
So Aston Villa was the favorite, but I take football with this phrase:
On the field we are 11 against 11, the winner will be the team
that runs the most and plays the most.
I don’t think I have ever had another striker
who is so fruitful in front of the goal.
And, of course, that gives you life, right?
The team believes in what they are doing,
they believe in the player that they have in front of them.
They know that if he has two touches, at least once he is scoring.
That is very good for all of them. And that helped us a lot.
Years of hard work, always hard work.
Eventually you reap the benefits of the hard work.
I could work for five years and reap nothing,
you could work just one year and reap nothing
and you could work for six months and reap the benefits.
This is what football is all about, I was working hard since childhood.
Football has always meant
a lot to me from my childhood.
I remember after school, leaving my school bag to go and play football.
I was passionate about football.
Obviously everything in life has challenges
and those challenges make us stronger.
There were many challenges, one of them, poverty.
I couldn’t afford to buy football boots or anything else.
But thank God, I overcame all these challenges and I wanted to play football.
I worked different jobs to try help myself
and my family overcome poverty.
And thank God, we are still going step by step and we hope for the best.
I wanted always to be the best version
of Ayoub El Kaabi and thank God,
Olympiacos is the team that has this version.
So, I hope God willing, it won’t stop, and I am hoping for more,
and I hope to stay ’’like we say’’ hungry to give more and more.
It had been many years since I attended a European game
at Karaiskakis, but this match, having seen many games,
I had never experienced an atmosphere like that one.
In the second match, as soon as you entered Karaiskakis,
you could feel from the crowd's energy that you were in a different game.
You sensed it without anyone telling you it was a semifinal.
I was more nervous.
Because you think it’s in the palm of your hand
and it seems like they can take it away.
During the first match it is not in the palm of your hand, it’s the opposite,
you have to go get it.
But it’s just there, that’s all.
And maybe because of that you come out like:
“Let’s see if we can reach it before they do.”
But when you already have it,
you start thinking, “What if they take it from me?”
What I wanted was clear,
if I scored or not, is to get a positive result.
Of course the attacker “lives’’ for scoring,
and when the attacker scores he gains more confidence,
and it helps him in the future.
And thank God that match gave me more confidence
in the upcoming games.
It was decisive, it was the final result, it showed we won the game
and we won with a good score, and we played very good.
We showed the true essence of Olympiacos.
I’ve seen many, many, many, many
many matches of Olympiacos, as a fan, as a member of the club.
What I’ve seen in the semi-final against Aston Villa,
I’ve never seen this in my life.
I saw thirty thousand people crying.
The emotion, I cannot describe it, really.
It was something-- I was in shock.
I was crying myself of course, but
I was looking all around me, seeing all generations,
old people, young, crying.
After the game, the Olympiacos players applauded the Aston Villa fans,
and the Aston Villa players acknowledged the Olympiacos fans.
Everyone was united, it was something truly extraordinary.
That day is something I will never forget.
To be honest, we didn’t celebrate much, just in our locker room, very simply.
We were saying we haven’t achieved much, we won the semi-finals,
but the final still awaits.
We are professional players and we know our responsibilities.
And we knew that any celebration must come only with gaining the title,
not before that.
That’s when you really get nervous.
But, okay, with the feeling that we are about to play a final.
Not as the favorites but also not with any disadvantages.
Just saying, “Each of us will go out with a 50% chance.”
I was trying to persuade myself that we did it, that we are in the final.
We were singing from the stands, for years,
“Please God, make a favour to me,
I want to see Olympiacos playing in a final.”
Your dreams as a kid, is here, you’re playing in a final.
But, now we are here,
maybe it would be better to win.
The truth is that it was a morning unlike any other
because you wake up and say to yourself, "It's time to play in a final."
It was crazy. People everywhere, on every corner.
That night before the game, they were already proud.
You can see that they’re coming from everywhere in Greece,
from Australia, from Chicago,
from everywhere around the world they came to see the game.
And this is Olympiacos.
When we are talking about Olympiacos,
it’s not my baby.
Olympiacos belongs to everybody.
It is our family.
And you have this responsibility for everybody.
It was very emotional in the stadium, to hear people
saying how much they missed people that couldn’t be with them at that time.
Their fathers, their grandfathers,
they said that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,
and they wanted these people to have experienced this with them.
Please guys, give everything today, because you cannot imagine.
It is history for you and for the fans, because this is AEK Stadium.
If you celebrate here the city will be crazy.
All together guys,
with the fans,
we will play here all together and today.
Please do it for me and for us because you deserve it.
You are an amazing group.
It was a terrifying feeling,
it was a weird feeling,
different from all the other matches I have played before.
But if you know how to manage your feelings
you can concentrate more during the match.
Ok guys, I’ll say only one more thing we are family.
We are family, help each other.
Go to win the trophy all together.
One, two, three, Olympiacos!
During the final, the moments didn’t have sixty seconds.
It was three hundred seconds maybe, every moment.
At least for me.
I think during the first half they were better than us.
But those matches are about competing.
It doesn’t mean the one that plays better will win.
We had a lot of tension.
It really comes down to the details-- who is stronger,
who wants it more.
It’s determined by one-on-one battles.
It is a match we need to be focused the entire time.
Running the whole time,
attentive to the things that are going to happen in the match.
So that we do not make a mistake.
The crowd gave us an extra boost;
every time there was a confrontation, they celebrated with us.
As a player, that kind of support motivates you
to be stronger and more prepared.
Our fans were as stressed as I was.
It was not like how I was used to seeing Olympiacos fans, you know,
the stadium vibrating and all that.
Everybody was like this.
During all moments of the final,
I never felt that we were going to lose.
Ok, I was stressed,
but it was a matter of when we would score the goal.
It’s what I tell the players, right?
“When you get to a distance where you can cross,
get the ball into the box,
because things happen in the box.” I always tell them the same thing:
“Things happen in the box.”
To be honest as soon as I scored, for a split second
I had an out-of-body experience; I didn’t know what was happening.
What can I say?
Everything froze; I don't remember hearing any sound.
I only remember seeing tearful,
happy faces and the crowd jumping from the stands.
I’m telling you this now, and I get chills;
it's something I don't know if I've ever experienced.
It felt like forever; I think it lasted about 10 minutes.
We were anxiously waiting for the referee to signal the goal
because there were some moments
they were reviewing.
Nobody can erase that goal.
Neither VAR.
Because it’s a will from a country.
The energy was more than the game.
It’s the history of the fans, the history of a club.
History of a century.
Can you imagine?
It’s impossible to erase that goal.
Those last five minutes felt like an eternity.
We were all standing, waiting for the game to end.
It was a unique occasion, you could see people, our supporters,
singing, crying.
You know it was...
something that we’ll never forget.
It's difficult to describe; it could be captured
by a great painter like Picasso or a renowned poet
like Elytis or Seferis in their own way.
I find myself unable to articulate it;
it truly cannot be described-- it's something you simply live through.
The dream has been fulfilled.
When you win,
I think both the players, the coach, myself,
our supporters even,
you feel tired, because of all this pressure.
Today, all of Greece will celebrate;
it was something we owed to all Greeks,
to the kids who have passed away, to my father above all,
to Savvas Theodoridis, to Gate 7, to those kids.
The Cup will go to the Municipal Theater.
It will go there and tomorrow to my father and Savvas, they deserve it.
What you have enjoyed is all this journey, a fantastic journey.
It’s something that will be in a special place in our memories,
in our heart.
Unforgettable moments.
That night Greece saw some events that have never happened before.
They estimated that nearly two million people went on the streets.
Today...
this crazy dream of ours became a reality.
For our Olympiacos, for our Piraeus, for our Greece.
This is something that our supporters deserve.
And I think that it’s not only for our supporters,
because if it’s a European title
it’s for all Greeks, for our country, for our pride.
These are the occasions that you never forget;
writing history with golden letters.
When the new generations watch it
and they see that this is possible,
I think that they are more well prepared to repeat it.
I want to enjoy this night
especially with our numerous supporters,
our players, our great coach
and all of you.
All of you who gave us the strength
to keep on dreaming
and make our dreams come true.
Long live the Legend,
long live Piraeus,
long live Greece, may you all be well!
Good evening
This is the first one but I hope it’s not the last one.
I’ve been a manager for 30 years.
I’m from a village of 3,000 people, so I’m just another one.
But once you win the Europa League,
and now you also win the Conference League,
you are no longer just another one.
Now the boys look at you... “Damn.”
As if to say, “Damn, that’s Mendilibar.”
When, just four days before, when I’d walk by...
“Hello.” “Hello.” And that was it, right?
Of course a beautiful feeling,
to play in a European competition
and to be considered the best player.
It gives me great honor.
And show the world that the Arab and African player can give the best,
in European competition.
We already see great examples of Arab and African players
achieving a lot in European competition.
So it’s a great honor and responsibility for all of us
to give the best and an honor also to our Moroccan Kingdom.