Friday, June 1, 2012

Obradovic to leave, Itoudis to succeed him?

Things are changing in Panathinaikos, once again.


The Giannakopoulos brothers said that they're sticking around for another season but this could be mostly in name rather than substance. According to allstarkourouna, the new president of Panathinaikos will be none other than Dimitris Giannakopoulos who is the son of the president and owner Pavlos Giannakopoulos. The author says that when a players agent tried to speak to the owners he was referred to Dimitris Giannakopoulos, who will be the man in charge from now on.

This creates a predicament for Zeljko Obradovic as he is not really fond of Dimitris Giannakopoulos and the cold war between goes way back. Another thing that could sway his decision to stay would be the new players' budget of the team which might be a lot lower than expected. The author also says that the new coach will be Greek with a 99% degree of certainty. In my eyes this could only mean one thing, that Dimitris Itoudis will step up as the head coach. He's been preparing for it for the last 13 years anyway.

He also says that from the core of the non-Greek players of Panathinaikos none will remain in the next season. This could only mean one thing that Panathinaikos is trying to keep up with Olympiakos in the hunt of Greek players and could follow suit in their model of a young, talented team with a great upside for the future.

The author also said very eloquently that CSKA Moscow has not had a head coach for this past season and there is a lot of money up there so it could be a potential next stop for Obradovic.

I would only make a note that the appearance of an article of that sort just before the last play-off game of the Greek league and the title game as such is a bit odd to say the least. However Obradovic himself did say that this could be the last game of his in the OAKA stadium of Panathinaikos and the next game could be his last game in the SEF stadium of Olympiakos as well.

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