‘Fraud’, fights and fury – Greek clubs, and their owners, play the same old games

By Matt Scott

April 28 – Greek Super League football is heading for what looks like a crunch title six-pointer on Sunday under a cloud of corruption slurs, following allegations of multiple assaults on match officials.

AEK Athens travel to Panathinaikos with both sides level on points at the top of the table and with four games to go in the title race. But claims of impropriety have been swirling for weeks.

They reached a crescendo last weekend after AEK went to Olympiacos and won 3-1 in a game that effectively put the home side out of the title race, leaving them nine points adrift. Another defeat away to Aris in midweek then left them 12 points behind.

After last Sunday’s game, an extraordinary Olympiacos statement blasted: “Today even the blind saw what is happening in Greek football. Fraud – tramps and illegals showed that they have no qualms. We told you that our world is a boiling cauldron!

“They gave a penalty in a phase where there is no contact. They didn’t even go to VAR when there was a clear foul before AEK’s goal. The whole of Greece was disgusted. The tramps of the [Greek football federation, the HFF], and the government [which is] incapable of dealing with them, killed football!”

Former English Premier League and FIFA referee Steve Bennett is the head of refereeing at the HFF. He has introduced a system whereby match officials are drafted in from other European federations to prevent attempts at intimidation and bribery by unscrupulous club officials.

It did not work in the AEK-Olympiacos game. In his official match report, reproduced in full on the sdna.gr website, the Italian FIFA referee Davide Massa detailed the difficulties he encountered. In a remarkably matter-of-fact description of one particularly disgraceful incident, Massa reported how he was the victim of an outrageous assault.

“At the end of the match, fans of the home team entered the pitch and we headed directly towards the tunnel,” wrote Massa. “As I entered the tunnel, where there were a lot of people, I felt a blow on the genitals without recognizing from whom.”

Other incidents also included a delayed start to the second half after AEK were late on to the pitch, a three-minute mid-game stoppage because flares in the stands were obscuring the VAR cameras and, after the third AEK goal, “balls [that] kept getting in the way of the game continuing”.

This was apparently due to Olympiacos’s owner, Evangelos Marinakis – who also doubles as the owner of English Premier League side Nottingham Forest – taking matters into his own hands during the match after the disputed penalty was awarded against his team. Parading down to the touchline, and flanked by his associates, he reportedly harangued the fourth official before kicking balls on to the pitch, apparently to delay the restart.

 

 

Massa abandoned the game with a minute of injury time still to play due to the home fans climbing over the advertising boards and on to the pitch. This was the start of a riot after the match, where Olympiacos fans were ripping up seats and advertising boards and hurling them at opposition fans and police.

 

 

According to sdna.gr, the Italian football federation has now written to Bennett and the Central Refereeing Committee to announce they would never again send their match officials to the Greek Super League. Incredibly, it is not even the first time that a referee has been assaulted in this way after a crunch game in Greek competition.

After a cup semi-final in 2020 involving Aris and, again, AEK Athens, the Portuguese assistant referee, Rui Tavares, also had his genitals squeezed. Yet in an incredible twist, Bennett has appointed the Portuguese referee in that very match, Arthur Soares Dias, as the man to take charge of the top-of-the-table clash between Panathinaikos and AEK this Sunday.

A report on the Greek website protothema.gr quoted the referee-observer’s match report from that cup game as saying: “‘I am the president of AEK’, they told us. Meanwhile, one of them, an elderly man with white hair, was shouting ‘No penalty, I’m the boss, there is no penalty’. He went to the first assistant, put his hands on his genitals and said, ‘Come on f—, no penalty.'”

AEK’s 72-year-old president and owner, Dimitris Melissanidis, might reasonably be described as “an elderly man with white hair”. But despite his advanced years, he is not lily-livered when it comes to referees.

It was also alleged that, a year earlier, Melissanidis had followed a Swiss referee into his dressing room at half-time of an AEK-PAOK Salonika game, berating him for what he claimed was an unfair disparity in the number of fouls awarded.

The Greek website gazzetta.gr reported how “afterwards [the referee Stefan] Klossner underlined in his match report that when he was heading to the locker room, Dimitris Melissanidis and [another] were waiting for him, expressing their complaints about the fouls he awarded. [Klossner] adding that their protests continued inside the locker room, as none of the policemen tried to stop them.”

Earlier this month, four Polish officials were forced to deny being drunk and abusive after reports they were confronted on an aeroplane by two Polish-speaking men claiming to be Panathinaikos fans, while en route to officiating a separate game involving AEK Athens.

The fans claimed the Polish officials had become very heated in an argument during the flight, which then spilled over into the baggage-collection area with both the fans and the referees claiming they had been assaulted by the other. The officials insisted they were not drunk and that the aggression had been initiated by the fans, not themselves. Even so, the following day, Bennett removed them from the match in favour of Greek officials. AEK went on to win.

The whole situation gives an overwhelming sense of unnecessary chaos in Greek football. Indeed, in public statements reproduced on the Sportish.co website last week, the HFF president, Panagiotis Baltakos, stated that Bennett had informed the HFF and top Super League clubs that UEFA is taking a very close interest in what is taking place there: “Bennett explained to us that there is already an investigation by UEFA.”

Plainly, the time for Greek football to take on the Herculean task of cleaning out its Augean stables is long overdue.

Contact the writer of this story, Matt Scott, at moc.l1710838577labto1710838577ofdlr1710838577owedi1710838577sni@o1710838577fni1710838577