AEK Athens has been one of the clubs to feature regularly on Euro Footy Focus during 2013. At the beginning of the year, the club was mired in major financial difficulties and relegation but was still standing on one jittery leg.
By the time I revisited the situation at the end of April, the club’s situation had declined markedly. Amid a backdrop sullied by an unwelcome pitch invasion, points deduction, relegation and a Nazi salute, the club crashed and burned.
But what has been happening at the Greek club since they were relegated to the amateur divisions and can AEK become a phoenix in the embers?
AEK would normally have been relegated to the Greek Football League (second tier) which is professional but as it stands AEK decided to self-relegate to amateur third tier and start from scratch.
So AEK have ended up in Football League 2, which is an amateur division consisting of 93 third division clubs.
Those 93 teams are in turn divided into six separate groups based on geographical area. The team that finishes top of each group is automatically promoted to the second tier Football League.
AEK are in Group 6 which consists of 15 teams from around Athens, southern Greece and the island of Crete.
And seven weeks into the 2013/14 season, AEK are very well placed in Group 6. They currently top the table on 13 points (four wins and one draw) and also have one game in hand on the two teams directly below them and two games in hand on some of the other 15 clubs.
This weeked they travel to third placed Ilisiakos Zografou (a team from an Eastern suburb of Athens), knowing that a win will tighten their grip on the top of Group 6.
And they know the prize for winning that mini-league: promotion to the second tier. New AEK owner Dimitros Melissanidis (who previously served as club president on three separate occasions in the 1990s) is also putting things in place for the future.
The cigar-smoking Melissanidis wants to light up the club
The successful shipping magnate and oil tycoon has managed to attract sizable sponsorship deals from Greek gambling company OPAP, telecommunications firm Nova Sports and Fujitsu which are worth an estimated €5 million in total. Other club sponsors include supermarket chain Carrefour and Italian automobile firm Lancia. Not bad for an amateur club in the Greek third division.
Melissanidis is also putting the building blocks in place for a modern 35,000-seater stadium in Northern Athens suburb of Nea Filadelfeia. Construction is expected to be completed at the end of 2015 and the Athens regional government has promised to to grant funding of €20 million, which covers about a quarter of the construction cost (the rest will be funded privately which could be a sticking point).
Returning to Nea Filadelfeia is seen as symbolic for AEK as it is the location of their traditional home, the Nikos Goumas stadium, which was demolished in 2003, forcing the club to use the Olympic Stadium.
Regardless of AEK’s current plight, these are encouraging signs. But they know the battle to return to top of Greek football will be a long and arduous one.
This season is actually quite poignant for AEK as it will be the 20th anniversary of their last Greek Superleague title which came in 1994. It just goes to show how far they have fallen in the intervening years.
Main Image: @AEK_FC_OFFICIAL
