PAOK’s Saturday game against Panserraikos (25/11) in Toumba is special and what makes it special is its return Pablo García in Toumba.

For the first time in his career, the Uruguayan coach will enter the stadium where he was revered as a folk hero to face the team that ultimately shaped his footballing career.

Pablo Garcia wore the PAOK jersey in 153 games and as he admits, he did not expect this connection to emerge with Dikefalos and his fans.

“When I came here I thought I would play for two years in a relaxed manner, without pressure from people, without anything. I came here and when I saw the people in the stands in the first practice, I said, “What is it?” This? Now I have to play well.”

I didn’t expect what I saw from the airport. I played for Real Madrid, which is considered the best team in the world, and then for PAOK, which has the best fans in the world. he said in an interview.

The connection, the “goodbye” and the coming back

In Toumba he was literally worshiped. “No Garcia. No Party” was written on the posters that PAOK fans held up for the Uruguayan in the stands, and his name became a slogan on their lips.

You want his explosive character, you want the beating of Diogo in a derby with Olympiakos, the fact that he never minced his words and avoided the politically correct in his statements, he became a… revolutionary icon for the fans.

The Uruguayan identified with them because perhaps they saw in his face a player who would do anything for the Two-Headed jersey on the field. And they felt like Garcia was one of them.

The “Indian”, as they call him, left PAOK in March 2013 after his relations with his then coach Giorgos Donis reached an impasse.

He returned when Hub Stephens took over Two-Headed but was not counted as a starter. He did not end his football career in Toumba, as he himself would have expected, since he signed with Xanthi in the winter of 2014.

However, a few months later he returned to Thessaloniki and PAOK after giving up his career. He took his first steps as a coach in the infrastructure departments of Dikefalo. First in the K-17 in the summer of 2015 and then in the K-19, with which he won the respective championship three times in a row.

The cup, the second team and the return to the Stoiximan Super League

When Abel Ferreira moved to take over Palmeiras in the fall of 2020, Pablo Garcia was asked to replace him. He sat on the PAOK first team bench for 42 games, recording a record of 23 wins, nine draws and ten losses.

The title he failed to win as a footballer, he won as PAOK’s first coach, winning the 2021 final with Olympiacos.

This is the last title the doubleheaders won. Mikael Krmecik scored a goal in stoppage time to give his team the trophy.

Winning the cup couldn’t change the course of events in PAOK. Management had decided to bring Razvan Lucescu back to Toumba and Ivan Savvidis suggested the Uruguayan take over Dikefalo’s then newly formed second team while completing his coaching training.

A proposal that Garcia accepted after consideration and – despite the bitterness he would have felt – he remained in Toumba as coach of PAOK B for two seasons until last summer when he decided to return to the Stoiximan Super League by rejecting his offer Panseraikou assumed.

The Uruguayan left Toumba after 15 years and said when he left that he would remain with PAOK until his death. “I have left PAOK many times, I don’t even have to say goodbye, I have been in Greece for fifteen years, I have found friends and brothers, everyone knows me and loves me and I love them.”

I will be PAOK until I die. Thank you all, I will be forever grateful. was his social media post.

Parallel careers of Lucescu and Garcia in PAOK

In the game on Saturday (November 25th), two coaches who have won trophies with Dikefalos will meet. Razvan Lucescu, undoubtedly the most successful coach in the history of PAOK, the coach of the double with the unbeaten championship and another trophy, and Pablo Garcia, the favorite in the stands who won the team’s last trophy.

Their presence in Toumba over the past two years has been more parallel, like two straight lines that never met.

The lack of communication between them made their coexistence even more difficult, considering that PAOK’s first and second teams were supposed to act as communicating containers.

Be that as it may, and regardless of everyone’s personal opinion, Pablo Garcia had a great influence on PAOK, especially as a footballer.

Even when he lost his mother, he stayed in Thessaloniki to play before a derby with Panathinaikos. His scream when he scored with a direct free kick almost from a corner was one of his greatest moments on the pitch, which he will experience as an opposing coach on Saturday.

And maybe LEX, who speaks on Themis Kaisaris’ podcast, didn’t admit it, but everyone thinks of Pablo Garcia when they hear the lyrics “I meet in the jungle, go to the horseshoe and cry, like a balladeer from Montevideo”…