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| Full name | Ολυμπιακός Σύνδεσμος Φιλάθλων Πειραιώς (Olympiakos Syndesmos Filathlon Peiraios) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | Thrilos(θρύλος) (Legend) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Founded | 1925 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ground | Karaiskaki, Piraeus, Athens | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Capacity | 33,334 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chairman | Sokratis Kokkalis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Manager | Trond Sollied | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| League | Proti Ethniki (Πρωτη Εθνικη - Premier Division) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2004-05 | Champion | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Olympiacos Piraeus is the biggest Greek sports club and one of the most important multi-sports clubs in Europe as they have won European titles (championships and cups) in Basketball, Volleyball, waterpolo and Athletics and a Balkan Cup in football. It was founded in 1925 at the city of Piraeus,where it still plays. With an outstanding 33 national championships in football, no Greek team even comes close to being as successfull as Olympiacos.
It was March 10, 1925 when the two older Piraeus clubs ("Piraeus Sports and Football Club" and "Football Fan Club of Piraeus") decided to merge forming a new club that would come to be known as "Olympiacos Fan Club of Piraeus" a.k.a. "The Legend" after the classic side of the 1930's which won a hatful of titles.
The club immediately caught the attention of the locals, with the team filling the Piraeus Velodrome (now the Karaiskakis stadium) despite the fact that their fans came mostly from poor families of workers or sailors.
It is worth noting that amongst the founding fathers of the newly formed team were five brothers that were all football players! These were the famous Andrianopoulos brothers'', (John, Dinos, George, Bill and Leonidas), that for a time formed the full attacking formation of Olympiacos.
In 1926, at the first Greek Championship, Olympiacos had a dispute with the EPO and the EPO banned all teams from playing against them. In the same year, Panathinaikos and AEK banded with Olympiacos and formed POK, a group of the three main Athenian teams that showed solidarity against the EPO in response to their expulsion from the Greek League and all three teams were expelled from the league in 1928 for Olympiacos' sake. They were reinstated the next year.
Olympiacos won the Greek Championship for the first time in the 1930-31 period and has since become the most decorated Greek team winning the Greek Championship 32 times out of a total of 68. Indeed they have more championships to their name than arch-rivals AEK Athens FC and Panathinaikos put together.
The second world war prefaced a golden era in the late 1940s and 1950s, as Olympiacos collected nine league championships and eight Greek Cups. With key performers such as Andreas Mouratis, Elias Rossidis, Thanassis Bebis, Elias Yfantis, Kostas Polychroniou, Giorgos Darivas and Savas Theodoridis, they won six consecutive titles from 1954-59. But even in the lean years, the club remained the team everyone wanted to beat.
In 1963, Panathinaikos stood by Olympiacos and POK and it helped Olympiakos when, due to a conflict with the Greek Football Association, Olympiakos was not allowed to make use of the Karaiskaki stadium. As a result Olympiakos had no place to train or play. Loukas Panourgias, a board member at Panathinaikos, organised for Apostolos Nikolaidis to be the temporary home of Olympiakos for its training and matches.
The team also holds the record for the greatest number of consecutive Championships won: Seven during the 1996-97 to the 2002-03 periods. (Previous record was also held by Olympiakos: Six during the 1953-54 to 1958-59 period).
Another glorious chapter began to unfold in 1972, after Nikos Goulandris became president. He appointed Lakis Petropoulos as coach and signed star players Giorgos Delikaris, Yves Triantafyllos, Julio Losada, Milton Viera and Dimitris Persidis. The highlight for that side was the 1973/74 season, when Olympiacos won the league with a record tally of points (59) and of goals (102). It was a question, not of whether they would win, but of how many they would score.
Olympiacos then lived their darkest days between the mid-1980s and mid-90s.In the mid-80’s Olympiacos came into the hands of Greek tycoon George Koskotas. Soon after, Koskotas was accused of and convicted for embezzlement, leaving Olympiacos deep in debt.On the pitch, the team went ten years without a league title from 1987-97.
The situation improved after Socrates Kokkalis took over Olympiacos's shares in 1993, having agreed a settlement of the club's debts with the Greek government. Kokkalis slowly resurrected the team, established the "shak" (paragka) of greek football, and his most significant step being to hire Dusan Bajevic as coach in the summer of 1996. Ever since, Olympiacos have been Greek champions - even after Bajevic left in 1999, thanks to the "shak".
In the 2003-04 season Olympiakos finished second but came back to win the title again, with coach Dusan Bajevic, in 2004-05. Dusan Bajevic was the man behind the Olympiakos success in the late 90's. He was the man to put together and coach a team of great players, the likes of Predrag Djorgevic, Grigoris Georgatos, Stelios Giannakopoulos, Giorgos Anatolakis etc. Most of them are still part and lead the team to more titles today!
Last year Olympiakos advanced to the cup finals on Wednesday May 25, 2005 and won the game against Aris winning one more double.
After the playoffs and the victory, Olympiacos' previous coach Dusan Bajevic of Serbia resigned under the pressure of a fraction of the fans and also due to the indecisiveness of the board concerning his future. The new coach is Trond Sollied of Norway.
1997 was the most successfull year in the history of Olympiacos Basketball Club as they have won the "Triple Crown" i.e. all leagues in which they participated: Greek Championhip and Cup as well as the Euroleague. Olympiacos is the only Greek team to have achieved this and one of the very few in the history of European Basketball. The Euroleague final was against Barcelona (Olympiacos - Barcelona: 73 - 58) and the most valuable player of the game was David Rivers (Olympiacos' playmaker). The same year they played against Chicago Bulls for a game between the European Champion and the NBA Champion. During that game Olympiacos never used a zone defence, although it was played according to european basketball ruling and was defeated naturally by the team of one of the greatest basketball players ever, Michael "Air" Jordan (Olympiacos - Chicago Bulls: 78 - 104). Dusan Ivkovic was Olympiacos' manager of that year's success story.
The greatest moment in the club's history was its victory in the 2002 European Champions Cup, after beating Honved in the final. Olympiacos had also played in the final of the previous year, as well as two European Cup finals in the late 90's. In 2002, Olympiacos also won the European Super Cup, after beating in the final the European Cup-Winner.
The club is the second most winning team in Greek water polo after Ethnikos Piraeus.
| UEFA Champions League 2005/06 |
| Ajax | Anderlecht | Arsenal | Artmedia Bratislava | Barcelona | Bayern Munich | Benfica | Chelsea | Club Brugge | Fenerbahce | Inter Milan | Juventus | Lille | Liverpool | Manchester United | Lyon | AC Milan | Olympiakos | Panathinaikos | Porto | PSV | Rapid Vienna | Real Betis | Real Madrid | Rangers | Rosenborg | Schalke 04 | Sparta Prague | Thun | Udinese | Villarreal | Werder Bremen |
| Greek National Division 2005/06 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AEK Athens | Akratitos | Apollon Kalamarias | Egaleo | Halkidona | Ionikos | Iraklis | Kallithea | Larissa FC (AEL 1964) | Levadiakos | OFI Kreta | Olympiacos | Panathinaikos | Panionios | PAOK | Skoda Xanthi|- | Greek football by seasons | ||||||
| 1990-91 | 1991-92 | 1992-93 | 1993-94 | 1994-95 | 1995-96 | 1996-97 | 1997-98 1998-99 | 1999-00 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | |||||||
| Football in Greece | |||||||
| Greek National Division | Greek Championships | ||||||
| Greek Cup | Greek Super Cup | Greek Doubles Cup | National teams | ||||
| Greek Premier Division | Second Division B | Third Division (North, South) | |||||
| Youth championships | |||||||