Giorgos & Panagiotis Angelopoulos – ‘Music’ on the court (and) dreams 

It’s been 16 years since that night in Madrid in April 2009 when Olympiacos beat the “Queen” in the 4th game of the play-offs, in the first season in which a best-of-five qualification system was used for the Final Four.

With Panagiotis Giannakis on the bench, the Reds came away with the victory and a ticket to Berlin with three victories to one; Panagiotis and Giorgos Angelopoulos were among the Olympiacos fans celebrating that night. As the new presidents of the historic club, who in the very first season after they acquired full ownership of the basketball club from Socratis Kokkalis, had led their beloved team to a Final Four—its first in 10 years!

And the timing was significant, as the finals would be on German soil once again. The only difference between Munich 1999 and Berlin 2009 is that, in 1999, the Angelopoulos brothers were in the stands as fans—as they had been in Tel Aviv in 1994, Zaragoza in 1995, and Rome in 1997.

Panagiotis was 21 and Giorgos just 20 on another fateful night, that of April 21, 1994, in Tel Aviv, when Cornelius Thompson’s three-pointer shattered Olympiacos’ and Giannis Ioannidis’ dreams of the Club’s first European trophy. The two young brothers leave the stadium saddened but with their faith intact; they know their beloved team will reach the very pinnacle of Europe… one day.

What they may not have imagined back in 2004, when—after a meeting arranged by the then mayor of Piraeus, Panagiotis Fasoulas—they reached an agreed with Socratis Kokkalis to co-fund the basketball team, was that they would one day take the Club to the very top of Europe. In fact, they’d do it twice, with unprecedented back-to-back titles (in 2012 and 2013) that only the great Jugoplastica and Maccabi had achieved since the Final Four was established in 1988.

Back in Madrid 16 years later, Olympiacos qualify once again against Real Madrid three games to one, earning their ticket to Abu Dhabi. The Angelopoulos brothers are as delighted as they were that first time, with the team reaching their 10th (and 4th consecutive) Final Four on their watch.

This time round in the Spanish capital, the two brothers, more mature now after weathering all manner of storms over the years, come straight out with it: “Yes, qualifying is a success in itself, but the ultimate goal is clear, and we’re going to win it”.

Over their years at the helm, they have spent tens of millions of euros on players’ and coaches’ taxes alone, so we can imagine how much their sweet obsession with Olympiacos must have cost them all told. But spending isn’t all they do as presidents… Rather, by doing it their way, they have created one of the most attractive models in Europe—one that almost all the teams on the Continent have copied – or at least adapted.

The Olympiacos team that travelled to Istanbul in 2012 had a budget of close to 5.5 million euros, while its average for the seasons (2011-2013) in which the Club achieved both its Euroleague wins (for players and coaches, net without taxes and other expenses) was still below seven million. This, while their opponents’ budgets were often five times higher. Even in Madrid in 2015, an Olympiacos squad that had cost around 15 million euros reached the final by eliminating CSKA Moscow, whose team had a 42-million-euro price tag, before playing in the final against a Real Madrid team (28 million) which had eliminated a Fenerbahçe of 30 million in the other semi-final.

Years later, GiorgosAngelopoulos would admit that the specific “…announcement was the boldest move we had made; the start of success…”. He was right.

Their value lay elsewhere

Olympiacos had created surplus value for the players it acquired at bargain prices, and their stock market value soared thanks to the team and its exploits. The best example must be the “pocket Hercules” Kyle Hines, whose transfer cost the Piraeus team 250,000-300,000 euros, but who left Olympiacos for CSKA Moscow for a multi-million-dollar fee which set himself (and his grandchildren) up for life.

The Angelopoulos brothers did throw a lot of money around until 2009, even though they didn’t have any sort of written agreement with Kokkalis—their relationship was based on trust, and their word was their bond. As soon as they acquired their majority share, however, they brought an active NBA player to Piraeus (Josh Childress, on a massive contract of some six million USD per year) and Linas Kleiza, too. Of course, they also invested in Greek players, for whom they have always had a soft spot. The most characteristic examples of the latter were Panagiotis Vassilopoulos and Sofoklis Schortsanitis. Later, there would be Papanikolaou, Sloukas, Mantzaris and Katsivelis, too—the unsung heroes who pushed Olympiacos ahead in the 2012 final against CSKA in Istanbul, before the great Vasilis Spanoulis completed the triumph with the assist of his life and Giorgos Printezis with the floater of his career.

Before they achieved the back-to-back, the two brothers had had their share of dark thoughts—like in 2011, when they decided it was time to leave, given the disheartening situation in Greece. “How is it possible for the team to get into the Final Four in Europe and not win a championship?”, they said, clearly criticizing the Greek Basketball Federation and the standard of refereeing at the time.

The big decision

Dúšan Ívkovič told them he’d stay when the team’s only big contract was Vassilis Spanoulis. During the course of the season, with Law and Dorsey added to the roster, the miracle happened. Giorgos Angelopoulos explained how they came to change their mind and stay with Olympiacos in an interview with Cosmote TV: “My daughter was 18 months old at the time, so she didn’t understand what was happening. But at some point afterwards, when my wife sat down to talk things over calmly, we asked ourselves what the child would hear about all this in the future and decided she deserved better. I didn’t want her to hear from Panagiotis and the kids that we’d done everything straight and above board, but—for the reasons I’ve explained, with the stuff that happened—ended up leaving with our heads bowed. That we let them bury us before our time, and our reputation. I mean we were there watching the eulogy, still very much alive—which is an oxymoron if ever I heard one.”

So they didn’t simply stay, they succeeded in their own special way. They breathed new life into Olympiacos basketball by winning the Euroleague twice, with 10 Final Fours and 6 finals! They won the Intercontinental, too, as well as 5 championships and another 5 Greek Cups. When they saw no other way out, they didn’t hesitate in 2019, in a Cup game against Panathinaikos, to up and leave and pay for it with relegation to the A2, in which Olympiacos fielded its development team with the regular team reserved for the Euroleague. It cost a lot, but they were adamant. And as they had said (and it became a motto for the fans): “We’ll go all the way.” And they did.

The great coaches and their relationship with Bartzokas

In addition to great players, they always brought important coaches to Piraeus, assigning particular value to the Greeks (Giannakis, Bartzokas, Sfairopoulos) while also convincing the great Dúšan Ívkovič to coach the same team a second time—a first in his career. They were always respectful and appreciative of their coaches, which was very much to their credit. They knew their and coach Bartzokas’ paths would cross again—in fact, both sides wanted it dearly. You’d rarely see them making separate statements, and when one has taken a stand, his brother is sure to follow. Strength in unity. And they never tire of talking about basketball, their beloved Olympiacos, and of course the team they grew up watching in the NBA, the Chicago Bulls, who they supported in all their games but one: the final of the MacDonalds tournament in 1997, in Paris, when the Bulls were up against Duda and the red and white champions of Europe and Greece!