Giorgos Koudas - The Transfer To Olympiakos

The Transfer To Olympiakos

After much courting by Olympiakos, it was made public in June 1966 that Koudas had agreed on a contract with the Piraeus club. It was something he later regretted, stating that "I did not fully understand the love that the people had for me at that time. I was young, born into a poor family, and I was thrilled by the prospect of moving to a better life Athens and earning so much money."

At that time, football in Greece was not fully professional, and thus contracts were signed on very loose terms. Once Koudas and his family had agreed to move to Piraeus, it simply was up to PAOK to agree to the transfer, which is still a subject of debate as to how the decision was taken. To this day, it is unclear whether the player was truly "abducted" from PAOK - as was said at the time in Thessaloniki - or if it was a legitimate transfer, that was shrouded as an illegitimate approach to the player and his family, to avoid public outrage. Nevertheless, on 16 August 1966 Koudas made his debut with Olympiakos in a friendly match.

Less than a year later, however, the Greek Junta came to power, and Costas Aslanidis was appointed as General Secretary of Sports. Through his various public opinion "pacification" initiatives, he largely controlled transfers between big clubs. After Koudas was drafted for military service in 1966-1968, he was forced to return to PAOK, which virtually forbade him to play for Olympiakos, apart from training and friendly matches. This bizarrre order was owing mostly to the extreme public outrage in northern Greece, that accompanied the Koudas transfer, but also due to the intervention of the PAOK president Giogros Pantelakis.

Despite Koudas' return to Thessaloniki, the circumstances of the transfer spawned a fierce animosity towards Olympiakos, which continues to this day, often presented in parallel to the social and economical rivalry between Athens and Thessaloniki.