Dimitris Melissanidis: Leaving the Greek club Bay AEK

AEK grew with her and Dimitris Melissanidis. He was a different person in 1994, and he’s a different person today. Without delving into the business, its ups and downs, adventures, and whispers. I stick to aesthetics alone. He matured, controlled himself as publicly as he could, preserved his legacy, and made sure his reputation remained intact.

For a long time he was thinking about selling the team and leaving. Most considered it a tale of the wolf and the sheep. Overall, AEK is a very strange, strange and psychologically quite changeable organisation. It was handed over to the financially powerful Marios Eliopoulos, with its executives, with its stadium, the impressive Hellenic Refugee Museum, the excellent team museum, and the Spata training center started by Nikos Notias, but it was rescued by Dimitris Melissanidis.

All of these things are not easy, they are not simple things. Especially the issues of stadium construction, reactions, appeals to the Council of Ministers, the war against “enemies and separatists”, financiers and finding resources in times of severe financial crises and memos. The training center was saved at auction, funds have been provided for its expansion, and there is a commitment to complete the works and turn the area into a small AEK town.

All of this did not happen on its own, and it is not enough in our country for there to be merely economic madness or sacrifices. They need relationships, political levers, and multi-factor allies from places that have nothing to do with football or sports. If I had to use a powerful term it is “strength”. Melissanidis persevered his way through at least five different circumstances and environments and succeeded.

Objections to the team, its leader, its methods and its choices are acceptable. But there are no recipes for permanent success. This is something that cannot be easily understood by educated or uneducated Greek fans – depending on their point of view -, especially with the generation gap that all the big teams in our country suffer from.