Olympiacos and AEK play in the semi-finals of the Greek Cup Final Four tonight (18.02., 20:00 ERT3, LIVE by Sportish). An institution returning after 18 years and a pair that lifted the first trophy in the final of the first tournament 46 years ago.

On July 12, 1976, at Glyfada Indoor Stadium, Olympiakos defeated AEK 81-69 to win the cup, which had been established – for the first time – by the Basketball Federation.

The game was to be played at the Panathinaiko Stadium, the touch and delivery of the flame of the 1976 Olympic Games was scheduled for 13.7. planned, so the venue in Kallimarmaro did not have time to be rebuilt. The four finals were played at the stadium until 1980, with Olympiakos winning all three, losing only to Panathinaikos (1979).

The 1976 cup was the first double in the history of Greek basketball, as the “Red-Whites” had won the championship in the same season. Olympiakos, who fought for the basketball title for years by joining the Panathinaikos-AEK duo without success, won two trophies in a matter of months. And not only!

This double that sealed his dominance in the 1975/76 season went undefeated! In fact, Piraeus won the league 22-0 while they had five more victories in the cup and achieved an impressive 27-0 that went down in history. A terrifying year with a notable presence in the Cup Winners’ Cup in which Olympiakos won all five home games of the tournament.

Among the teams that won at Papastratio and the French Tour and reached the final (lost to Olympia Milan). And all this without any strangers in its composition.

It was the beginning of the titles that the Olympiacos ‘golden team’ would then receive in the second half of the ’70s. Two championships, four cups and qualification for the “6” of the Champions Cup was the record of the company of the great Greek-Americans, but also of the Greek internationals, who formed the top ten of the Olympic Games in those years.

But it was also a justification for the work of the past few years, as Faidonas lifted Mattheou Olympiakos from the Second National and slowly built the team that eventually became the protagonist.

Nikos Goulandris’ help in bringing the likes of Macheiras, Giatzoglou, Kastrinakis, Diakoulas and Melini to Greece came at the right time and Olympiakos went from being a ‘wedge’ to the dominant AEK and Panathinaikos becoming the protagonist.

Thanasis Rammos: The Vindication of Phaedo Matthew

The late Matthew had returned to Olympiacos after a short stint at Pagrati and aspired to lead the ‘red-whites’ to the top.

Thanasis Rammos, one of the team’s historic managers, recalled: “Phaedo was both tough and a pioneer. After going to America, he tried to apply what he had learned there to Greek reality. He trained us intensively, not only in basketball. He wanted us to be in very good physical condition to be athletes first of all. One day he threw chairs. Much rain. In the end it started snowing.

We are in Pasalimani, in the open field, ready to run. Makis Katsafados, who is also older, catches him and says to him: “Trainer, you don’t see what’s happening, where should we go now?” But Phaedo didn’t boast: “Look, God does his work and we do ours!” And we started running over Pasalimani, in front of us, behind him with his car“

– Company with the “uncle”?

“Ha ha yes with the uncle who loved him very much and we said that he … bugs us because he transferred everything we did in training to Phaedo with the Ni and the Sigma. But everything we learned in basketball, everything we did as a team, Matthew taught us. We were very lucky to have him as a coach because he was many years ahead of his time. He had a similar job with the National Armed Forces. For basketball at the time, Matthew was the A and the Z.“.

– However, it was too late to get the titles.

“Yes, imagine if I had a decade in the team behind me. It wasn’t easy to break the incumbents first of AEK and then Panathinaikos. They also had the “means” back then, we fought passionately, we came close, but we were second most of the time. Matthew didn’t put it down, he believed us. The Greek-Americans, who were also trained from the USA, also came, we started and played faster. We pressed all over the field, we played man-to-man, we ran in the zone season, we were athletic. When Melini came we also became a brain team because he was a brilliant playmaker“.

– And where you get nothing, in 1976 you scan everything at once. Championship and cup without actually experiencing a defeat.

“I don’t know how it turned out, what we hid inside, but this year we were very strong. Even when we were behind the scoreboard in the game, we knew something was going to happen and we’d go home smiling. We had now reached the age of maturity, especially in front of our big opponents“.

– It would be a great personal satisfaction.

“Certainly. You know, I played at Olympiakos for 16 years. I’m not from Piraeus as I grew up in Kallithea but one day Thodoris Vamvakousis saw me and suggested I play basketball. Of course I had no idea. I left and everything changed. My whole life.

I didn’t mind hopping on and off the green bus to go to practice or not even having shorts to start playing. It was a magical world, something special. I made friends and stayed close to the sport as a coach. It might not have bothered me to quit without winning anything at all. However, the double of 76, the titles after that, was certainly what they call icing on the cake. I cannot describe our joy, ours, Matthew’s, our followers“.

He almost lost to Hercules

The first Greek Cup took place with the participation of 90 teams that played in the north and south until their 16th birthday. Then everyone played together. Olympiacos’ big D-phase victory came in the ‘Tomb of the Indians’ when they defeated Panathinaikos 64-60 to become the big favorites to win the cup. It was the third win over the ‘eternal adversary’ (with a top score of 101-74 in Piraeus) showing Olympiacos’ dominance throughout the season.

In the cup game (14/6), Panathinaikos played without the penalized Kefalos and Koronaios, while 17-year-old Memos Ioannou made his debut. The “Red-Whites” with the trio Giatzoglou (11 p.), Kastrinaki (12 p.) and Diakoula (12 p.) in charge prevailed and aimed for the final.

However, they almost lost for the first time (and of course decisively) when they faced Hercules in the (singles) semifinals. At the BAO stadium, Thessaloniki had a very good day with Costas Bogatsiotis, who scored 21 points but was also fatal for his team as he lost lay-ups and free throws and eventually won Olympiakos 73-71 (Kastrinakis 22, Diakoulas 16). Earlier, referee Costas Rigas threatened to abandon the game if the insults from the podium didn’t stop.

“That was nothing. Where to see what happened to Pagrati in the quarterfinals“recalls Costas Bogatsiotis who continues:”We played outside the Mets, on the playground. At Pagrati headquarters, with a shower that didn’t sit well with us, stories about savages (laughs). The game is coming to an end, I think it took three minutes to finish, it’s going to a stage where the Pagrati people are protesting for the whistle of the late Panagiotis Tsolakidis and it’s going to be… the defeat . People come in, two or three little things fall, the police have come“.

Iraklis, who had placed 5th in the championship, clinched the win with the break score (57-62) and advanced to the semifinals. Aside from “Giraios” and Panathinaikos, Olympiacos defeated Aeolos Tavrou 82-56 and Demokritos 87-70.

AEK, for its part, reached the final and only played away. With Costas Mourouzis in charge, Union managed to snag a European ticket (Cup Winners’ Cup) in a rather mediocre year as Olympiacos had already won the league. The hardest win for the “yellow-blacks” was against Sporting, when expatriate Pete Kontos made the final 67:66 with two free throws 7″ before the end (19th Giannouzakos, 18th Kontos, 13th Tsoskounoglou – Stamelos 22, Pantazis 17).

Then AEK eliminated Proodeftiki (56-82), Ionikos Nikaia (72-66) and his compatriot Ionikos NF in the semifinals 83-66 in a match in which Michalis Giannouzakos scored 30 points.

Comfortable in the final

In front of 2,500 spectators, Olympiakos prevailed quite easily in the final. It went ahead 41-26 at halftime and reached the conquest of the cup with the final 81-69. Somehow the “red and white” celebrated the first double in their history even in the middle of summer (although the players weren’t entirely satisfied since they hadn’t paid the league price)

referee: Fatherof Grace – P. Tsolakidis

Olympic (Mattheou): Kastrinakis 20, Giatzoglou 19, Diakoulas 18, Melini 11, Barlas 7, Rammos 2, Sismanidis 2, Spanos 2, Garonis, Kokorogiannis

AEK (Mourouzis): Giannouzakos 18, Kontos 13, Tsoskounoglou 10, Kantelis 10, Papadatos 10, Trontzos 6, Nesiadis 2, Nydriotis, Apostolidis, Karterouliotis

Two years later, Piraeus took second place with coach Costas Mourouzis. In the final (which took place in Kallimarmaro) they defeated AEK again as they did in 1980 in their last title before their team’s rebirth in the 90s.

In 1997, the year of the treble crown, Olympiakos had won the first trophy (as Giorgos Sigalas used to say) after eliminating AEK (of Giannis Ioannidis) in the semi-final of the last four thanks to Franco Nakic’s three-pointer 6” before expiry (63-61). With a buzzer beater (by Papanikolaou) he also won the cup against Apollon Patras (80-78).

The Union got a small rematch a year later when they eliminated Olympiakos in the last four of Thessaloniki (but lost to Aris in the final) and the 2018 final in the final held in the two Aorakia when they lost against the “Red- White” who was the big favorite with 88-83 and the hero Giannoulis Larentzakis.

The rest in Dyo Aorakia, today (18/2) at 8pm.