Socratis Kokkalis was born in Athens in 1939, the son of surgeon and eminent medical school professor Petros Kokkalis, who was also a leading figure of the Greek Left at time. His father was a subsequent minister in the resistance-era “Government of the Mountain” and part of the post-WWII “Provisional Democratic Government”.
After the defeat of the “Democratic Army of Greece” in the Greek Civil War, Dr. Petros Kokkalis fled the country and eventually settled in East Germany (GDR) in the mid-1950s, where he continued to serve the medical profession at the highest levels. He was followed there by his son Socratis Kokkalis, who graduated from the Humboldt University in East Berlin with a degree in physics. He continued his studies at the same university, obtaining a master’s degree in electronics technology in 1963, the same year he started his business career, which won him over.
After his permanent repatriation to Greece in 1977, Socratis Kokkalis founded Intracom, which became the flagship company of his business group as it expanded to countries within and outside the European Union. The entire group, Intracom Holdings, which at one time employed more than 6,200 people in Greece and abroad, and included subsidiaries such as Intralot, Intracom Telecom, Intracom Defense, Intrasoft, Hellas Online, Intrakat, AIT, as well as media outlets, namely, the Flash radio station, the newspaper “Epikerotita” and the television station TV Magic, among others. Nevertheless, despite his prodigious business activity, Kokkalis is remembered mainly as a successful president of Olympiacos!
A protagonist in Olympiacos’ day-to-day operations for roughly 20 years
From basketball to football
Kokkalis served as president of Olympiacos FC for 17 years, from May 1993 to December 2010, as well as president of the basketball club from 1991 to 2004. During his tenure, Olympiacos won 12 football championships (seven in a row, beginning in the 1996-1997 season to the 2002-2003 season), five Cups and 5 Doubles (1999, 2005-2006, 2008-2009) as well as one Super Cup (2007). In basketball, during his tenure, Olympiacos won five championships, three Cups, two Doubles, and, of course, the Euroleague in 1997.
Before his departure from the Club’s helm, Olympiacos had acquired a modern football venue, the new Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium built on the site of the former stadium, as well as a thoroughly modernized training center in the Rentis district. The team’s current offices on Alexandras Square in Piraeus were built under Kokkalis’ administration. Thanks to his timely arrival, Olympiacos experienced a genuine restart both in basketball, where the team had been absent from the championship race for decades, as well as in football, which had experienced had the “barren years” after the misadventures that marked the administrations of Giorgos Koskotas and Argyris Saliarelis.
His involvement with Olympiacos was somewhat of a surprise, as he wasn’t a shipowner, like the historical presidents of the Club in previous decades, such as Nikos Goulandris, Stavros Daifas, and others. He also wasn’t a member of the Club’s elite “100 Immortals” members.
It is said that in 1993, before taking over Olympiacos FC through a ruling by a first instance court, he had convened a meeting with his trusted advisers, such as Giorgos Louvaris, Giorgos Salonikis and Savvas Theodoridis, and asked them whether he should get involved with the football Club: they all advised him to stay away and stick with the basketball side only.
Olympiacos BC at that time was coached by the great Giannis Ioannidis and was experiencing one of its most prominent phases. Kokkalis listened to them, however, in the morning he went ahead and acquired the ownership of the football club by assuming all of its debts.
Covering the team’s arrears, primarily to the Bank of Crete, was his initial priority. In fact, a special law by Parliament was needed for this, along with turning over all future revenue from a sponsorship deal with the state’s lottery and betting pools, OPAP.
Giovanni and Socratis Kokkalis raise the championship trophy, one of seven consecutive titles between 1997 and 2003.
His ‘generals’
Kokkalis supposedly wasn’t a “big fan” of the influence of managers on his team – preferring to rely on the pivotal role played former top players, such as Takis Lemonis, Oleh Protasov, Božidar Bandović and others, or even diehard Olympiacos men, such as manager Nikos Alefantos, who sat on Olympiacos’ bench as coach on three separate occasions during that era.
Yet it was two celebrated coaches, in their respective sports, that helped him the most: Ioannidis in basketball and Dusan Bayevic in football. Ioannidis arrived from Thessaloniki in 1991 to build a championship-caliber Olympiacos around Serbian forward Zarko Paspalj.
On his part, Bayevic left AEK Athens in 1996 for Olympiacos and began building the foundations of a team that would dominate football in Greece for many years – and coming within five minutes, in May 1999 – of reaching a Champions League semi-final.
Both coaches parted with Olympiacos on a sour note at the end of their first stint, possibly because of friction in their relationship with the president, who was wary of other personalities within the Club being more popular than him.
Ioannidis saw the team he created become European champions under Dusan Ivkovic, while Bayevic, who left in 2000 and returned for one year in 2004-05, left when he realized that every time he had a rift with one of the team’s star players, Kokkalis wouldn’t support him.
The hierarchy in those days was very simple: there was the president and below him were his players – especially the veterans. His relationship with Predrag Djordjevic, for example, was unique – closer than with any of the managers he hired. He also liked to acquire players, usually Greeks, who played for Olympiacos’ standing rivals. He lured Alekos Alexandris, Refik Šabanadžović and later Giannis Okkas from AEK Athens; Antonis Nikopolidis and Michalis Konstantinou from Panathinaikos; Stelios Venetidis, Georgios Georgiadis and Pantelis Kafes from PAOK Thessaloniki.
With this tactic, he weakened and bedeviled Olympiacos’ rivals, something that amused him since the time when the Olympiacos basketball team acquired Russian Alexander Volkov, who played a year for Olympiacos but was paid by Panathinaikos, who had compensated him to terminate his contract.
A fan of flashy marquee players
Kokkalis loved flashy and creative players. According to one famous anecdote told by his son, Petros S. Kokkalis, who was present in various Olympiacos managements, usually in the role of vice-president, “Socrates loved to spend money on players who were great dribblers and heel flicked the ball”.
During this era, star playmakers and dribblers, such as Rivaldo, Giovanni, Nery Castillo, Luciano Galleti, Sebastian Leto and others wore the Olympiacos jersey. He also liked players with distinct personalities and with stints in major leagues, such as Christian Karembeu, Dudu, Ze Elias and Darko Kovačević.
He believed more money should be spent for strikers, “because they’ll bring it back”, with the result being that under his watch Olympiacos did very well in the Greek first division league but sometimes struggled in European competitions, where defenders with a solid on-field presence are essential. He approached football simplistically, as he didn’t quite view see Olympiacos as a company.
He preferred players over managers, “artists” with the ball rather than tacticians. He also believed that winning the championship was paramount.
An eye towards a publicly owned company
It was considered as a given that the way he managed the Club would create debts if Olympiacos wasn’t competing in the Champions League, which is the reason he wanted to transform it into a publicly owned company after the opening of the new Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium in 2004.
A promotional campaign at the time registered more than 25,000 fans as Olympiacos members, a far cry from when the Club’s official membership was set at 100 elite individuals. However, when that initiative failed to prove as successful as planned and debts grew, Kokkalis made sure to find and leave behind a suitable successor in his place.
In the summer of 2010 and while a major economic and fiscal crisis was beginning to “bite”, he accepted an offer to sell his shares to shipowner Evangelos Marinakis, leaving behind team facilities that needed to be paid off and arrears to other teams and players, while at the same time handing over an organization that had built up a champion’s mentality, thanks to an impressive collection of domestic titles won during his tenure.
Socratis Kokkalis has been married twice. From his first marriage to Sofia Skoura he has a son, Petros. From his second marriage to Eleni Farmaki, he had two more sons, Konstantinos and Socrates.
Socrates Kokkalis Jr. died in July 2018 in Cleveland, Ohio, a blow that devastated the former Olympiacos president, who has since significantly reduced his public appearances.
Despite an official invitation from the Club, he was not present at its centenary celebrations. When speculation arose in 2019 of his desire to again get involved with Olympiacos’ basketball team, he flatly denied such a prospect in a terse announcement.
This was also his last public statement involving day-to-day developments regarding Olympiacos, the Club where he was a protagonist for roughly 20 years…
