Victor Mitropoulos in Gazeta: “The management of the European Patent Office has been manipulated for the past 30 years”

You were part of the historic Panathinaikos team that reached the Wembley final. What do you remember of Ferenc Puskas?

“He was always joking everywhere, he didn’t rely on any opponent. I remember we were playing against Everton at Liverpool and he would say ‘11 of them, 11 of us’. He would tell the footballers that there was no one better than them and since they were equal in number they could win. In fact, I was touched by the respect everyone had for him wherever he went… Doors opened. In other words, big European names at the time came to congratulate him, because he was 44 years old…”

Was there anything in particular that you remember from him?

“He loved the ‘pigs’ in Chalandri. The tavern where we ate. He was a good man, a very good person, and he took Panathinaikos to the highest point in its history.”

Who is the toughest opponent you have faced?

“Although many years have passed, when I was playing at right or left back, Papaioannou of AIK was a very difficult opponent.”

What are the differences in football between your era and today?;

“If the 1970 team played against the 2024 team, the 1970 team would lose easily and by a large margin of goals. Because football has become much stronger and faster. Much more thoughtful. Then we played with art, that is, Delikaris took the ball, Papaioannou took the ball, dribbled past three opponents and scored the goal. Today, to beat three opponents, you must have four legs because two of them will cut you. If you keep the ball for more than 10 seconds, you risk breaking it! Football has become much stronger and faster. Back then we relied on art, how good craftsmen we are, how well we dribble the ball. We were shaking the world! Now football has become… a machine.”

What was your passion for football then?

“Then and now, whether he’s stopped the ball for 30 years, he’s Dumazus.”

This year, Olympiacos became the first Greek team to win a European title. Did you watch it? And how did they achieve this great success?

“Olympiacos are lucky and I don’t say this to flatter someone, he’s not my type. They are lucky because they have a president who doesn’t understand God. He gave 3 million to sign Marcelo, the same amount to James and changed three managers, something no other team owner would dare to do.”

We also saw that Panathinaikos changed their coach, but the course was not successful. How did you see this change?;

“I personally appreciate Jovanovic very much, and I did not understand why this happened.

Initially, Terem gave Panathinaikos a break, which quickly faded.

Then he counted some players and some not, which created a bad atmosphere in the team.”

We have spent many years experiencing an exciting tournament like this year’s tournament where PAOK won the title in the last round. Do you think they deserved the title?

“He made it fair and square, yes. I won’t just focus on Olympiacos, for whom the Huancar problem was a huge refereeing error. By chance, I went to that game, because my daughter also went to the stadium. I was right where the firecrackers fell, and when I heard the noise I looked and saw nothing. All that happened after that was that Olympiacos reset and went back to the way they were with the ups and downs they got from the coaches. As a result, PAOK got it right, yes. AEK had a very good team, but they dropped a point against Panserraikos, they lost against Kifisia, they dropped points at the beginning of the season that no one expected them to lose.”

Who is your favorite player right now?the;

“One of the best players in the Greek league is Livia Garcia from AEK.”

We have seen many players complaining about the refereeing after the matches. What do you think about the refereeing in the VAR era? Do you think mistakes were made?

“The pathology of Greek football is the refereeing, and the refereeing, as is known, is appointed by the EPO administration. As I have said in other media, the EPO administration has been manipulated for the past 30 years, that is, the big clubs Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, AEK Athens, PAOK make alliances with each other, take over the EPO administration, appoint the general manager of the refereeing, that is, KED. They do what they want, and now VAR will hinder them a little because they cannot say what they want.

They can’t say that a donkey flies. It flies, because if a donkey sticks out its nose, the situation changes a little.

Football will come his way at some point, and this year’s tournament was already exciting. It was decided in the last 12 minutes when PAOK scored Aris’ goal. The Olympiacos Conference League was decided by Campi’s goal in extra time. OPAP ARENA is one of the best stadiums I have seen. Stadiums are being built… Panathinaikos is building Botanikos, and there is Karaiskakis and Oka, they asked to make a decision to rebuild it with the flaws it had. People go to the stadium and if the refereeing phenomenon disappears we will not have problems with violence. So I am optimistic that something will happen…”

If you took over the presidency of the European Union today, what would you do?

“I will crush those who interfere in the refereeing the next morning.” I will not ask for these comedies that now say that foreigners must come. I will go to UEFA and ask them to restore confidence, I want elite referees every Sunday. The fairy tales that UEFA cannot and does not give, these are the stories that the average man listens to and says… Ah, people have tried. In the big advanced football countries, referees are appointed a month before the match, so you can know which Englishman is not going to play in the next three matches. In that case you can say “I want the best so that confidence is restored” and then you can ask some referees to do tests because it needs a special process to be able to do that. Now we had Baltakos who brought the Azerbaijanis, from Malta, from Afghanistan, I don’t know if he brought them. This story was comical, and when things got tense, the referees came like those who attended the conference, and they did not even dare to say a word. The goal of Olympiacos that was allowed in the final… was done. Calculated correctly. But someone else might disagree, and it didn’t make much difference. Then it went to penalties.

“Referees also play a major role in violence cases, no matter what the representatives of the sports ministers say. I say ‘demonstrate’ because they say there is violence in the stadiums. If you cannot fight the issue of refereeing, you will never be able to reduce violence. First of all, violence is not limited to the stadiums. They have sex in Omonia, they have sex I don’t know where… So, you have to be very strict.”

Your comment on the upcoming EPO elections?

“These elections are closed, PAOK moved faster, made agreements, or rather his contacts so that the mind does not go to the wrong side. But even leaving is not a mistake… He made agreements and he will go. I did not have a good opinion of Makis Gagatsis’ father, and as a journalist in my newspaper, I also criticized Makis Gagatsis very strongly. But he is a young child, he has to determine his own path. That is why I give him advice because I am much older than him. To arrange his own path and not to look at the path of his father who succeeded during his presidency in winning Euro 2004 and three years later no one remembers him.”

If you were the Premier League chairman tomorrow, what would you do?

“I will take an independent course and improve the regulations they are suffering from.”

What regulations are affected?

“Everyone… CAP is suffering in many things, the refereeing systems are suffering, the notifications they issue are suffering. Didn’t you see the noise of the Cup Final? Of course, this concerns the European Patent Office. If the person who created Karagiozis was alive, he would draw him a sketch. He would have asked Hatziziavati to talk to Karagiozis about the Cup Final… They knew in advance that if there was a team from the North and a team from the South they would play in the middle… At the beginning of December the regulation comes “cameras, seats etc. and 4 operators, nothing, nothing, and if they had only kept the match revenues, they would have solved all the problems with the stadium equipment.”

You consider this era to exist.Who are the relevant football executives and if so which ones?

“It’s not about having the ability as a football CEO. The point is to set the rules and whoever takes the helm implements what the rules say. Here in Greece the rules don’t apply.”

How do you judge the Greek team’s owners today?

“Unfortunately, the first thing they do when the game is over is think about who is going to referee the next game. You finish a game on Sunday night and you have the next game in seven days… they immediately look for the referee who is going to blow the whistle!

Melissanidis was a poor boy and became a businessman. Marinakis, I know him and I also know his father who was a New Democracy MP, he was a good shipowner and became a businessman. Alafouzos has grown a lot. PAOK has Ivan, who has invested a lot of money, sometimes he is considered a clown, but what can we do, these things are also part of life…

If they forget about the refereeing and just focus on football, we will win.”

During the period in which you were the president of the Egyptian Football Association, what was your football vision?

“I am satisfied that I achieved my vision in the two to two and a half years that I was there. Which one was it? They played in the stadiums and I threw 29 pitches. In these 29 stadiums, by order of the KAP, I put the grass, the floodlights, the press theory, the canteens and everything. Without these conditions it would not have been possible to play a match in a stadium, because I controlled it.”