ATHENS — Greece is bringing back the international inspectors — but this time it’s to help sort out football, not the economy.
On Tuesday, senior figures from the governing bodies of world and European football will sign a deal with the Greek government aimed at cleaning up the game. Government officials are describing the pact as a “memorandum” — a loaded term, as it was also used to describe bailouts agreed with international lenders during the sovereign debt crisis.
“We wanted to send a message of shock to Greek football, using the word ‘memorandum,’ which has a heavy political burden, in order to make clear that this is a situation where no other concessions can be made,” State Minister George Gerapetritis, who is in charge of drafting the text, told POLITICO in an interview.
“Following the logic of the last decade, we want to show that it is better to make a memorandum ourselves than have one imposed on us,” he added.
If clubs don’t comply, they face being expelled from major competitions, including on the international stage.
Greek football has faced problems for decades, with frequent allegations of match-fixing and bribery of referees and players.
Critics, however, accuse the government of talking tough but backing away from meaningful action in the face of opposition from powerful club owners and militant fan groups.
Greek football has faced problems for decades, with frequent allegations of match-fixing and bribery of referees and players. It is also plagued by violence, much of which is orchestrated by organized groups.
The two biggest problems for the government are the country’s two biggest clubs — Olympiacos, based in the port city of Piraeus near Athens, and PAOK, from the northern city of Thessaloniki — whose owners wield considerable power.
Olympiacos belongs to Evangelos Marinakis, a shipping magnate and media tycoon. He owns one of the world’s biggest tanker groups, a national TV channel, several newspapers, radio stations and news websites. As well as Olympiacos, he owns England’s Nottingham Forest team, twice winners of the European Cup who are now in the second tier of English football.
Olympiacos owner Evangelos Marinakis | Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Marinakis was acquitted on charges of match-fixing in Greece in 2018. The same year, a prosecutor charged Marinakis with drug trafficking, but judges ruled the charge was not justified.
Ivan Savvidis, a Greek-Russian billionaire who owns PAOK, is the founder of a tobacco, cigarette and food-processing group, Agrokom. His other assets include a minority stake in Thessaloniki’s port, a national TV channel and several newspapers. In 2018, he was banned from all football matches for a year after racing onto the pitch to protest a penalty decision while carrying a gun.
The two teams and their owners are bitter rivals. Olympiacos has dominated Greek football for the past two decades and won the league championship for seven consecutive years from 2011. But last year PAOK claimed the title.
The clubs also occupy the top two spots in the Greek Super League this season. On Sunday, leaders Olympiacos grabbed a 1-0 win over second-placed PAOK in a sold-out Toumba Stadium in Thessaloniki to open up a 5-point gap between the sides.
Ownership fight
The current drama began after an independent sports commission set up by the government ruled that PAOK and another team, Xanthi, should be relegated from the Super League because Savvidis had bought the latter, breaking rules that prevent a single investor owning more than one club. Xanthi are currently ninth in the league.
According to officials familiar with the commission’s investigation, the acquisition was made through a Cypriot offshore company controlled by Savvidis’ cousin. PAOK denies that Xanthi is owned by Savvidis’ family.
“The government panicked when PAOK fans started threatening to divide Greece in two” — Sports journalist Aris Asvestas
The backlash against possible relegation was so strong that Agriculture Minister Makis Voridis was forced to leave a gathering with farmers in northern Greece out of fears for his security. PAOK fans warned government officials against showing up anywhere in the north of the country without bodyguards and a police escort.
The government’s football problem has also entangled the ruling New Democracy party. Theodoros Zagorakis, a member of the European Parliament, was expelled by the party after threatening to quit if PAOK were relegated. Zagorakis happens to be a former PAOK player who also captained the Greek national side that won the European Championship in 2004.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis overturned the commission’s decision, which had been backed by the sports ministry, and the punishment was downgraded in late January from relegation to a deduction of 5 points. That sanction, which has not yet been applied as the legal case is still open, could still help Olympiacos win the league.
Lefteris Doukas, a spokesperson for PAOK, said the punishment was clearly meant to aid Olympiacos. “The fabricated indictment on the alleged multiownership was the ideal camouflage,” he said. (A spokesperson for Olympiacos wasn’t available for comment.)
But some observers say the government’s bark is much worse than its bite. They accuse ministers of losing their nerve by canceling the relegation penalty in the face of fierce opposition from PAOK and its supporters.
“The government panicked when PAOK fans started threatening to divide Greece in two,” said Aris Asvestas, a journalist at radio station Sport FM. “The commission was (the government’s) own body and it should have protected it and its decision.”
PAOK’s defender Sverrir Ingi Ingason (left) fights for the ball with Olympiacos’ defender Konstantinos Tsimikas (right) during their match at the Toumba Stadium in Thessaloniki, on February 23, 2020 | Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images
But Gerapetritis, a close ally of the prime minister who is widely considered the government’s chief problem-solver, defended the official response. He said the government “had to step back on this in order to get something more important fixed — Greek football itself.”
In his office in the Maximos mansion, a government building that also houses the prime minister’s offices, Gerapetritis has a red-and-black flag in his window belonging to the small Piraeus team AOF Porfyras, for whom he used to play.
“In order to turn football from a circus … into a sports show, we must first intervene,” he said. “If we had let things get out of hand and the country had been divided and we had violence, we would have been criticized for that. If we finally manage to make a real change … no one will remember this type of small intervention.”
‘Explosive blend’
Gerapetritis said the government wants to press the reset button, hence the “memorandum” with FIFA and UEFA, the governing bodies of world and European football, respectively.
The government has unveiled few details of the memorandum so far. But it is expected to cover four broad areas: the organization of Greek football, match-fixing, violence and arbitration. The government will pledge to bring forward legislation while the football governing bodies will come up with action plans.
Gerapetritis said the memorandum will also specify that referees will no longer be employed by the Greek football federation and set out severe penalties for clubs that break the rules, including expulsion from European and other competitions.
“The same people own football teams, media and powerful businesses. This triptych is, by definition, an explosive blend, given the influence that the clubs exert on sports fans” — State Minister George Gerapetritis
He said the main problem for Greek football is the clubs’ owners.
“The same people own football teams, media and powerful businesses. This triptych is, by definition, an explosive blend, given the influence that the clubs exert on sports fans. That gives them immense power in Greek society. It is a condition much more intense in Greece than in other countries,” Gerapetritis said.
Sports journalist Asvestas isn’t convinced the plan will have the desired effect. “It seems that in football, as well as in the economy, a foreign bogeyman is needed to make changes, even if eventually not much is improved,” he said.
To Asvestas, the plan seems rather familiar. In 2015-16, then-Sports Minister Stavros Kontonis also tried to overhaul Greek football, bringing in FIFA and UEFA officials and using international rather than local referees to try to eliminate bribery. The resulting spat between government and the national football federation led to the main cup competition being suspended.
“There was only corruption in football when I took over. I was attacked by all involved, I got several threats, but in the end they saw that I was treating everyone the same way. The football became competitive again and the situation was improved,” Kontonis, of the leftist Syriza party, told POLITICO.
Kontonis said he fails to see what the added value of the new memorandum will be.
“The government made a mess with the legislation changing penalties (for PAOK and Xanthi) and now they are trying to save face by bringing in a bad copy of what we have already done,” he said.