The special Lefteris Lyratzis: This year’s troubles, the foundation and the new contract

PAOK faced Olympiakos in the derby with an extremely young defense. Ahead of 22-year-old Dominic Kotarski were Ingi Ingason, 22-year-old Marios Tsaoussi, 18-year-old Konstantinos Koulierakis and 22-year-old Lefteris Lyratzis.

Add in 21-year-old Thiago Dandas and it’s easy to see that Dikefalos beat Olympiakos by setting up the recent Super League Round 8 line-up alongside Levadeakis against Volos in ‘Karaiskakis’.

Of all these young men from Dikephalos, Lyratzis is a special case. And it’s not because of his extraordinary energy in the phase of the second goal scored by his team.

At the same stage, the 60th ball scored for him by Konstantinos Koulierakis was superb, and all the cooperation PAOK did to get the ball to Narey and from there into the Red-Whites’ net.

He has played over 50 games for the first team

Lyratzis is special because everyone at PAOK now treats him the same as the team’s old caravans. Ever since he was established in Dikephalos’ squad about a year ago last year, the young Kavaliotis defender has been regarded as his side’s most important extreme defender.

Finally, almost 4 years after his debut in the first team (he had come on as a substitute for Crespo in a game against Atetitos in December 2018), Lyratzis cannot be treated as one of the remaining youngsters of PAOK.

Nothing more and nothing less, Lyratzis has already completed 52 missions with the PAOK jersey. He had previously worked through all of the team’s infrastructure departments since moving from Krinides to Thessaloniki in 2012. And he didn’t just play, he captained every age division he competed in, from K14 to K19.

Suffering from an ankle injury

The truth is that so far this season Lyratzis has not been able to repeat the impressive course that started on Matchday 13 and the game against Lamia when he was given a regular shirt by Loucheskou for the first time.

It was a time when the Romania coach decided to reshuffle the cards and ‘revive’ a side he said had already collapsed, and the youngster coped with that.

It didn’t start well this year. His ankle injury in the first friendly of the pre-season in Holland worried him a lot.

From then until recently, Lyratzis had problems with his leg that did not allow him to perform at 100%. Despite this, Lucescu rightly sees him as the key full-back for the right wing of his defence.

Announcements are expected

PAOK is aware of Lyratzis’ potential and his expectations are very high. Makes sense…because he’s not just a talented footballer, but a player who grew up in the Bicephalous and is now identified with his DNA.

His comments after the victory over Olympiakos over Stavros Sarafis and his emotion when he dedicated the double to “Caesar” in “Karaiskakis” were significant.

The people of Dicephalos have long offered him a new contract, essentially a reward, with better terms in recognition of his progress. And it’s only a matter of time before announcements start to appear.