It’s Olympiakos’ (97th) birthday today, if he leaves Berlin standing up, he can even celebrate in Unter den Linten…

The famous street under the gossip is known to lead from Alexanderplatz to the Brandenburg Gate and as the situation develops, Olympiakos can be taken from the fourth to the third and even higher!

Of course, at the moment – and until the results against the three Russian teams are validated – the ranking is fictitious, but if CSKA Moscow, Zenit St. Petersburg and Unics Kazan are eliminated, Piraeus can still end up in second place.

At the moment they are in the fourth and are reserved for more …

Logothetidis and Cohen

After the four straight defeats, Olympiakos showed character, regrouping, counterattacking and going 4-0 in front as they return to German soil tonight to present their own version in the old film starring Vassilis Logothetidis…

The Greeks (and not the Germans) are back!

However, there is a difference here: Theodoros Ginopoulos saw in the film how the Germans fall asleep again, while this can happen (again) in reality tonight, six nights after the fall of Munich …

Also, Olympiacos can falsify the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song…

First we take (not Manhattan, but) Munich, then we take Berlin!

“So all of this coincides with the club’s 97th birthday and given that, as they used to say in the fairy tale.”red thread tied to the spool, wrapped, kick to spin, fairy tale to begin with“.

The story of each team is like a fairy tale, as is that of the basketball Olympiaco, which I’ll delve into on occasion today…

The disciples of Ionideio and the bait with the shirts

A team that began to crawl in a school yard, with a soccer player and a pole vaulter (who later played basketball at… Panathinaikos) and with the young players’ cards confused with the communist manifestos!

The story began to develop in 1936, when the physical education teacher of the Ionian Model School of Piraeus, then called the Piraeus Secondary School (and located on Korai Square, next to the City Hall and opposite the Municipal Theater), Vassilis Stamataria, walked by James Naismith the Paved the yard, set up two hoops, and added basketball to the upper-class training routine!

The young students responded enthusiastically to their teacher’s initiative and, with George Ieronymos as their leader, they began to devote themselves to basketball, without imagining what would happen after three years …

In 1939, the soccer player and later general manager of the team (in Bukovi’s time) Aris Chrysafopoulos appeared and asked the school’s director to allow the last year students to cast the new Olympiakos basketball team, in order to lure them in fact kept with him and offered them red and white shirts!

That same afternoon, nine students from the last year appeared at the Bakalas stadium in Kastella and that day the Olympiacos basketball team was born, consisting of George Ieronymos, Xenophon Nikolaidis, Petros Dimitropoulos, who also played water polo. Pipis ( Spyros ) Andreadis, his brother George Andreadis, Alexandros Koutsoukos, Manolis Hatzinikolaou, Pitsolantis and Michopoulos.

“Put on iron shoes so they don’t melt you again”

The coach of the first team of Olympiakos was Nikos Karavias and the curator (later vice-president of the first administration of the EEC) Giannis Koutsoulentis, a very strict man who once, when Giannis Spanoudakis asked him for a penny for new shoes, asked him to “brand” Romika”, because the old ones were pierced and he was ashamed to wear them with the patch he made in a vulcanizer (!), he gave him the following answer…

“I’ll give you money, Giannis, but make sure you buy… Iron shoes so they don’t melt again“!

World War II and German occupation interrupted the course of the group, newly formed in 1945, when Petros Dimitropoulos recruited children and recruited, among others, the Chania-born brothers Aleko and Giannis Spanoudakis from Ionideio, from the execution of their 118 villagers on August 1, 1941 in the plain from Alikianos to their old age and after two years they moved to Piraeus with their family…

“We came here because we were hungry and couldn’t live in Crete“I was once told about Alekos Spanoudakis (born 1928) who would become the legend of ‘Legend’, in whose ranks he spent 49 years as a player and coach.”[In1945wehadwonthePiraeusschoolchampionshipwithIonideioandthenDimitropoulosfoundusandregisteredusatOlympiakos[1945hattenwirmitIonideiodieSchulmeisterschaftvonPiräusgewonnenunddannhatunsDimitropoulosgefundenundunsbeiOlympiakosangemeldet“.

Back then (born 1923) Petros Dimitropoulos played basketball and water polo at Olympiakos, later became the first athlete in history to cross the Greek sports rubicon and played for the Panathinaikos basketball team while emigrating to Australia in 1950 and making a career there Vitoria as Peter Demos.

Bombolas, the… commune and the flogging by the father

Back in Piraeus, 17-year-old Spanoudakis took his first steps on the Olympiacos basketball team while also being converted to EPON by a classmate in Ionideio who is still one of the most prominent businessmen and commercial agents of the place today.

His name;

George Bombola!

One night, however, the Spanoudakis’ father, who was serving as a major in the Greek Army, found the proclamations of the EAM youth in Aleko’s pocket and became a Turk…of his own accord!

“He grabbed me by my shirt, put me in a corner of the house, took out the whip he had for the horse, blacked me on the wood and asked me: “How can I guard the Greek state, and you can as come out my community“!

At the same time, in an atmosphere of political passion, three other Olympiacos players paid for it: in 1946, the brothers Andreadis and Nikolaidis were chosen to coach the national team, but when they arrived at the airport to leave, they were refused exit by order of the then military minister, George Stratos, “for national reasons”!

“Just a dead end, where will you take our championship”!

Meanwhile, the… community grew abruptly, leading Olympiacos to their first championship win in their history in 1949, against Triton, indeed the final in a full stadium on 3 September (and in front of spectators with men’s and women’s ties). toilets) turned into a real dogfight!

At one point, Spanoudakis, who was marked with traps, could not stand and slapped Nikos Skylakakis (the so-called “dog” who rushed from Mani) in the face, who still remembers her being 99 years old, but it’s remained prosperous and stubborn!

“In the previous phase he had hit me on a bass and when I fell he came over me and said “Oh you idiot where are you taking our championship”. I also broke out and kicked him, leaving him unconscious for fifteen minutes“Spanoudakis told me when he opened the book of his life that he would leave life like today, March 10, 2019!

The game ended with a 36-34 winner and Triton as champion, but the red pear had the tail behind it!

Olympiakos, who had previously replayed the game against XANTH, complained of a rule violation (on a goal foul where the basket didn’t count) and won the replay by 28:24 and was thus crowned champion Players sing the original The club’s anthem, which reads:Red and white our emblem and pride on our forehead“.

The first Olympiacos champions were Alekos Spanoudakis (top scorer with 133 points in eight games), Giannis Spanoudakis, who also served as coach, Gerakarakis, Koutsoukos, Hatzinikolaou, Tsidatos, Sinos, Gounopoulos and Arkoudeas.

The jump shot and the screen

Aside from the first two championships (1949, 1960) and Olympiacos’ first participation in the European Cup (1960, with Galatasaray), the Spanoudaki brothers are also credited with basketball patents!

Besides Aleko and Giannis, who was three years younger and also a javelin thrower and who died on June 10, 2010, the red and white jersey was also worn by her third brother: Fanis, born in 1945, who died young and owned the “Churrasco” restaurant in Glyfada was.

The so-called “Atomist” Alekos Spanoudakis was the first player in Europe to attempt the jump shot and the selfless Giannis to throw the screen in defense while her national teammate Takis Taliadoros (of X .Α.Ν.Θ ) established the dribble flow!

The Spanoudakis’ patents arose not only from the amazing basketball instinct they both possessed, but also from the circumstances at the time…

The Marshall Plan and basketball on the aircraft carrier deck

In 1948, as part of the “Marshall Plan” (as part of the Truman Doctrine during the Cold War), an aircraft carrier of the American 6th Fleet, the famous “Coral Sea”, anchored in Piraeus, which featured a regular stadium on its deck. !

According to his logic “Welcome (not only the dollar, but also) basketball“Almost every day the Americans invited teams and played games.

One day, Alekos Spanoudakis was called to face an opponent named Tess who was 2.05m tall and covered the baskets.

“He gave me thirty points and wouldn’t let me near the basket. We then shot while still and I had no luck as I… reached Tess’s navel. When I got home I wouldn’t close my eyes all night trying to figure out a way to deal with it. Then the idea for the jump shot came to me and I started with six hours of secret training in a stadium at the Karelas factory and kicking out of the tutoring center where my father sent me to take exams at the polytechnic. I corruptly presented it at the Eurobasket in Cairo (SS: where Greece won the bronze medal) in 1949, but then I perfected it and it became my chariot“.

At the same time, Giannis Spanoudakis, also influenced by the games at “Coral Sea”, invented the screen, which he first used in Greek basketball and then taught him as a coach, while also exporting it abroad and fighting for two years in Italy at Motomorini Bologna.

In addition, due to his acquaintance with (legendary Celtics playmaker) Bob Cuzy and with (the coach of the US national team at the 1960 Olympic tournament), Giannis was the first coach to introduce daily and later doubles training for the teams that were then the whole made week three!