THE LAST GREEK HERO

Dimitris Kalinakis 

Dimitris is just a random guy from Ilioupoli, in the suburbs of Athens. He just became manager of the local team, Ilioupoli FC which competes in the second division of the Greek football pyramid. 

He will be the protagonist of this carreer, which wants to be a journeyman around a couple of European Leagues. It's going to be chill, we are just going around the continent to play in some leagues I would like to play before the new chapter comes out. We may win and we may lose, but none of it matters.

In the next update we will meet the team and talk about tactics. For now that's all. See you soon!

MEET THE TEAM

Ilioupoli has a team that is predicted to finish in the middle of the league, and with only one spot available for promotion we can safely expect not to be involved in the promotion battle. The board is much more pessimistic than me, and will be pleased if we don't finish dead last! 

In my opinion the team is capable of avoiding the relegation tussle, but I can live with a low pressure/low ambition management. Let's take a paragraph to show you the noteworthy memebers of the squad, so that you can make an opinion for yourself. 

The team captain is Giannis Gotsoulias, nothing special technically speaking but a lot of experience in the helleinc lower leagues. He was the captain when Dimitris got here, he will remain captain. We don't want to mess up the dynamics straight away! 

The best player is the argentinan winger Franco Costa, who just landed in Europe after spending his whole carreer in South America. His pay is more than double the second highest salary, and rightfully so. Our striker Apostolos Giannou is a good experienced forward, who might still have some more junk in his trunk. Finally our midfilder Carlos Ramos, who decided to take a big step and come to the old continent after spending his early years in his homecountry of Venezuela. 

The only signing Dimitris did was Spyros Fourlanos, free agent, to give some more options in the defensive side of the pitch. 

The first game in Dimitris professional carreer will be against Apollon Paralimnium, a team competing in the third level of the greek pyramid. The game will be the third round of the greek cup. In theory we will be favourites, so hopefully we can make a good impression straight away.

The game revealed more complex than expected. We conceded an early goal and had an hard time coming back in the game. The equalizing goal was signed by our ghanian whinger Roe Addo. We had to go to extra-time to break the equilibrium, but ultimetly we managed to win it with a gol from the other ghanian winger Frimpong. 

The next game will be for the 4th round against Olimpiakos Volou, a team of the 4th tier. On paper it should be easier, in reality we will live to see. 

Next update will be with a bit more games, seen a little bit less in detail! See you soon! 

Good luck with this 

Thank you Bigmatt!

THE FIRST MONTHS

I know that the greek second division is one of the biggest leagues in the world, but let me take a couple of minutes to explain the structure and the functioning to the few that are not familiar with it. First of all is divided in two groups, one composed by team in the north, one with the teams in the south. Each group has 12 teams, in which they play each other twice for a total of 22 games. At the end the last team is relegated, the first 5 play in a promotion pool where the winner is promoted to SuperLeague, while the team from 6 to 11 play in the relegation pool, where the last 3 are relegated!

From next season the structure will change again, but to be honest is not clear yet how. I guess will be easier once we will see it first hand. 

We are now in mid december, and after an incredible start of the campaing with a resounding 7-0 win, we kind of entered a mediocre period of results. Some good wins in November were cut short from a heavy deafeat by the hand of the reserve team of Olympiacos. Nonetheless we can be happy from what we have seen from the team so far. 

The table sees us in second place at the turn of the corner. Kallithea is basically doing a competition by themselves, but we are still exceeding expectetions! 

Despite doing very well in the league, the true masterpiece was done in the greek cup, where we just eliminated Panetolikos, a team from the Superleague! Yes, they are one of the worst team in the Superleague, but still! We came back in the return leg of the sixth turn, and won on penalties! We will now take part in the quarter finals of the cup! 

To finish up the recap, here are the top performers of the team so far. Apostolos Giannou has totaled an incredible 15 goals in 16 games, while Gertjan Bushaj has been splendid as a left back! 7 assists and the highest average rating are the highlights of his form till this point, hopefully he can keep it going for the rest of the season!

EARLY MASTERPIECE

With January comes the market, and we received a very good bid for Franco Costa. The financial situation is not alarming, but is not very good either, and around 50k come in handy. Efcharistó dear Franco, hope you enjoyed your 6month stint in Europe, now go back to Argentina

We fill the void left by him with a loan of the young wing from Costarica Alvaro Zamora. He plays for Aris a team in the Superleague, and while he is not as good as Costa, I think he will substitute him well.

But now let's get back to the title of the post. The more attentive of you will remember that we had to face the quarter final of the Greek Cup. The team in front of us is Volos, currently sitting in eleventh place in Superleague. We won the first leg, played in Ilioupoli, with a very convincing 2-1. In the return leg we went down 2-0 but the always scoring Apostolus Giannou scored the 2-1 that sent the quarter final to extra time. Around half an hour later, we are facing penalties. But just as we did in the previous round, we end up winning! 

We are one of the four best team in the greek peninsula. Let that sink in! We will face off against Panathinaikos, so we can wave goodbye to the competition. Although saying that we exceeded expectations is almost an understatement!

FINISHING UP THE FIRST PHASE

Let's just pull the sick tooth out. The story of the season, our deep run in the cup, was brutally interrupted by Panathinaikos. We stood no chance, and we ended up losing 10-3 on aggregate. Despite the huge loss, we can look back and be incredibly proud of our path, we came much further than anyone would have expected, myself included. 

In parallel we kept a good form in the league, a couple of losses here and there, a couple of wins that heated the fans and neutral alike, and a couple of draws. I'm very happy that we manage to score at least once in any game we played this year, if you consider that we only had 3 clean sheets you can see that we have been sparking the enthusiasm of the fans across the whole campaing. 

The first phase is now concluded, and we finished 2nd, qualifying for the promotion pool. In the north AEK B won the league, and will take part in the promotion phase but won't be able to go to the Superleague, being a reserve team.

The draw will see us face off against Kallithea, which is the favourite to go up, AEK B and Panachiki and Diagoras, who should not be better than us. I highly doubt that we will get promoted, but again, we had not to finish last and finished second instead, so we can be very happy as things stand!

FINISHING THE FIRST SEASON

With this update we will finish up the first year of Dimitris' career. The promotion pool in which we achieved a place played out pretty nicely. At home we performed very well, with the exception of Kallithea that dominated us. They were the favoured for promotion in our pool and played accordingly. We managed to draw away from home with them, but when they already had achieved their goal. The most shocking result, in my opinion, was the loss with Panachaiki, and although we got our revenge in the return leg, it still unsettles me a bit.

They were favourite, and they delivered. Kallithea will play in the Greek Superleague, alongside Niki Volou from the northern pool. We finished where we started this last round, in third place. A very good achievement from my point of view, and from the board's one aswell!

We finish the season exceeding the expectations of everyone, myself included. But what makes me the happiest is the new financial situation. We started in red, and now we are over 300k clean of debts. Financial stability is the most important thing at this level, and having it means more than any result on the pitch. Now we can prepare the next season with a sound balance and a good stepping stone from where to begin.

A look upstair to celebrate Panathinaikos, that won the double with league and cup success. Next season we will have to face off against Atromitos and Lamia, who are coming down.

Dimitris will spend the summer studying, you make sure to enjoy the few days of summer left!

BLANK PAGE, THE NEW ILIOUPOLI

In this offseason we lost the entirety of our team. Most of them left on a free due to their contract expiry, others went to other team (for no fee). This gave me a very nice range to operate and build a team behind my tactic. It felt a lot like going to the supermarket, due to the high availability of players and the low demands they had, especially the domestic guys. The salary cap didn't even rise that much in respect to last year, we went from roughly 750k€/y to 870k€/y. I brought in 20 players and promoted 2 from the academy, this way we have a starter and a reserve. Given the fact that we will simply have to play the league (which changed format! more about it later) and the greek cup, so we don't need a Chelsea's size squad. 

The best prospect in the team, which has been called to the first team, is Manolis Foustanos who will wear the number 10. Lots of responsabilities at such a young age? I don't think so, despite the number (which was his favourite, giving me vibes of “chosen one”) he will not be the starter. Our best player is Bryan Olivera, who played last season in SuperLeague at Volos. He accepted to get down, to get a larger role. 

With all the adjustment the season preview has us as 8th. The two teams that were relegated last year, Atromitos and Lamia, are the favourites to go back up. I think we are good enough to challange for promotion honestly, but maybe I'm too excited by the fact that the squad was completely built by me. Only time will tell.

The most attentive between yourselves might have noticed that the structure of the league has changed. The others may just remember that I wrote about it a couple of rows above. From now on scrap the division between north and south and forget about the promotion pool. Now the Super League 2 has a “standard” structure: 20 teams, the 2 best go up, the worst 4 go down. Easy peasy. These will be the 20 team in competition:

The first game of the competition will be in the Greek Cup, where last year we incredibily reached the semifinals. We will try to give the fans a sequel, but it will be very complicated! In fact, the draw of the second round has not been very kind with us: we will face off against PAS Lamia, the favourite to win our league. Given the fact that there are no SuperLeague team in the competition at this stage, we can say that we drew the strongest team in the pool!

We will see this and other games in the next update. See you!

JACKRABBIT START

Last time we left saying that we were about to face a very complicated game. Well, guess I underestimated my guys. We won 3-0 and went on to have a perfect month of October, despite the superdense schedule! The first, and only, loss was against Atromitos, the team media predicted to finish first. We also wonagainst Kifisia to reach the 6th turn of the Greek Cup!

We have lost one and drew one in 14 games, in which league would not we be first? We are challenging for promotion, I was positive for this season, but this is exceeding my expectations!

Next round of the cup will be another important test. We will face off against Aris, a team from first division. Last season the finished 5th, we will be the underdog by a mile. Not that that has haver stopped us! 

Something is moving now, our contract expires at the end of the season, and given the recent form of Ilioupoli other teams start to come knocking for Dimitris. Panachainki was previewed to finish 12th and are in the deep end of the table. They would love to have us, what will we do??

I'M NOT LEAVING

Like the true Wolf of Ilioupoli, Dimitris used the offer as leverage to get an improved offer from the board. 2k€ more  per year, but a 20% increase in case of promotion. Dimitris is putting his money where his mouth is!

Let's go get that bag then! Aris was a big step for us. We got hammered at home, and we manage to only lose 0-2 thanks to a superb performance by our keeper Dimitris Katsimitros! Away from home we played what is probabily the best game so far in this career: 0-3 at home of the stronger team. The plan was to counterattcak, but the guys transformed into navy seals and in pure stealth mode annhilated our host. In the quarter finals we faced off against Niki Volou, a team competing in SuperLeague1 but fighting for staying in it. Completely different level from what we faced so far, and the results shows it. For the second year in a row we reach the semifinals by playing in second division! 

The draw for the semifinal is very lucky: we dodge both PAOK and AEK and get Ofi Creta! We will see, but reaching the final and getting promotion the same year would have been unfathomable just 18 months ago!

The league table is very good, of course: we are 10 points clean for promotion with 14 games remaining. It is still a lot of games but given that we lost only twice and drew two, optimism is justified.

We will meet next time with the league over and the result of the semifinals!

UP WE GO

OFI Creta was a tough match up, a scabby team that never takes the leg out of the tackle. The skill level is pretty equal, we can be considered a bit worse, but it's mostly level. What made the difference in both legs was the morale, we were at the absolute peak of the season, about to close up promotion discussions and on a great win streak. We make history reaching the final by winning twice 2-1, and now we will have to face AEK in the final!

This is how we finished up the campaign. Someone would say that we finished in style? 

Promotion wasn't even discussed during the summer, but with the games passing it became a very clear possibility. By February we were basically expecting Ilioupoli to go up. Now we will compete with Super League 1 teams on a weekly basis!

This is the final league table. Atromitos is going up with us, soing a nice yo-yo move and going straigh back to Superleague 1

Next update we will see how the final of the Greek Cup goes. Finger crossed but don't get your hopes up!

THE BIG GAME

We have clinched promotion, but the season is not over. It's actually climaxing right now, with the big final of the Greek Cup. The opponent is much bigger than us, with better facilities, better reputation, better finances and, of course, a better squad. The just finished third in the league, behind Aris which we have already beaten though…

The excitement around the match was very contagious. It was the first really important game in Dimitris career, and despite being the underdog, the pressure was pretty heavy. 

The match itself went pretty bad. Actually it wasn't so bad, it just went as predicted. AEK was compeltely superior in every aspect of the game, and we didn't have much to offer. This is what a big team is, delivering when needed, not leaving anything to chance, doing what it takes to win. It's going to leave some marks on Dimitris, giving him a good idea of what it means to be a big team, capable of competing on multiple fronts. 

Just after the game, Dimitris phone started buzzing day and night. What he did at Ilioupoli had raised more than one ear and now there were a couple of teams interested in listening to the music Kalinakis was playing. The first to show interest was Panourgias Papaioannou, president of Panetolikos. The team just avoided relegation from SuperLeague 1 and are looking for a manager that would take them to the higher half of the table. 

We receieved offers from aboard. Not to far from home, but still abroad. On the other side of the Aegian See Faith Karagumruk and Kasimpasa have both put their eyes on Dimitris. They share a similar faith: they just got relegated from the Turkish Superleague and are looking for a manager capable of going back up straight away.

My idea was to stay at Ilioupoli, but I didn't forsee such interesting proposals. I will take the weekend to decide what to do, because all the three projects are very attracting to me. I can safely say that with the promotion, our time at Ilioupoli has come to an end, despite another year of contract. 

I'M NOT DONE IN GREECE!

It was a tough choice, but in the end I made it. I decided to stay in greece, and try to compete in SuperLeague 1. The new team of Dimitris Kalinakis is Panetolikos!

The objective is to finish mid-table, and to do so we have around the triple of the wage budget we had in Ilioupoli. Our salary (after some negotiations) is also tripled, breaking the wall off the 100k at the third year of work!

The season preveiw is saying that we will probabily finish accordingly to what the board expects from us. Hopefully we can clinch a spot in the top half to take part to the title pool!

Ilioupoli decided to continue with our assistant manager and to promote him. To continue the good philosophy of football we implemented!

This is a first draft of the tactic I think we will use. The team is used to it so I think it's better not to change too much!

FIRST STEPS IN OUR NEW SHOES

We are roughly 300km away from our previeus home, and are about to embark on a new league. It's true that we have better facilities to embark on such journey, but as the saying goes: “Whoever leaves the old road for the new knows what they leave behind but not what they find.”

The first game will be against Asteras Tripolis, away from home. How exciting!

The first game in charge went pretty well. We won 1-2 in a close game, coming up on top thanks to the quality of our strikers! The first game at home was a astounding success, looked like a match of tennis! Olympiacos and Aris humbled us, but then we went on a very good streak! Kifisa, in our first round of the cup, was an easy opponent, easy draw wasy win!

We are flying in the league table, we are currently third, and in a good spot to finish in the top half. At roughly one third of the road, I can't say I'm displeased!

Next match will be pretty heavy on the morale. We will meet Ilioupoli as opponent for the first time. Hopefully we will snatch up three points!

RIGHT FIRST TIME AROUND

The first game as an opponent against Ilioupoli was very heavy emotionally, but very easily won. We didn't let the emotions run too high and did our job excellently. 

The return leg was even better. Despite being the first time as an opponent in the stadium of his city, Dimitris lead the team to a sounding 0-4 win.

The regular season came to an end and we played very well. A couple of losses here and there, against AEK and Olympiacos which are better equipped than us, but nonetheless a near perfect path! In the cup we got eliminated at the quarter final stage, Olympiacos proved to be an obstacle too high to overcome. Despite this we can still be happy about our performances in the cup!

To my surprise, and I think to the excitement of many more, Ilioupoli reached the semifinals, where they lost against Aris. In 3 season they have reached the semifinal twice and one final! Impressive!!

In January we signed our first “big” name: unfortunately we had a season ending inhoury for our starting striker and I decided to opt for the reliable and experience Edin Dzeko!

Now le's cut to the point. We finished the regular season and you already saw we did pretty well. It's pretty obvoius that we achieved a higer-mid table finish, so we can be happy. Just how happy can we be though?

I would say very happy! We will enter the championship pool as a second force, and while it seemed that we are still not equipped to challange for the title, an european finish is certainly in our chords! Let's try to finish top4! 

And since tthe board is really happy with Dimitris, they approved to finance his studies to obtain the Continental Pro Licence!

VENI, VIDI, VICI

Soooo, the championship pool has come to an end and it went… incredibly well! 

A great and unexpected success that lead our charge towards the title! AEK litteraly collapsed during this round and fell off what seemed to be an easy title win for them! They close in third, behind Olympiacos that instead had an incredible race. Panathinaikos finished 6th but managed to secure Europa League football hanks to an outstanding 4-0 win over Aris in the final of the Greek Cup.

Edin Dzeko praised Kalinakis, but in reality he is the true hero of this incredible run! In just six months he became a beloved member of the team and an absolue fan favourite!  At 40 he found a new spark that lead us to success!

And to cite the great Julius Cesar: Veni, Vidi, Vici. He will retire in a couple of weeks, with another title in his cabinet. Thank you Edin, enjoy retirement!

Of course, let's give his honor to Dimitris aswell, who one with an impressive majority the prize of Coach o the year! Well, deserved, ater all Panetolikos has been the best in almost every category!

Finally, Dimiris can be even happier, because his former club, coached by his former assistant, will play in SuperLeague1 again next year! Congratulations to Ilioupoli!

And now let's get ready for Champions League Football in Season 4!!

BUSY SUMMER

After winning the title we had to prepare for a summer that was going to be very busy. And since we had to skip our holidays, Dimitris decided to knock on the board's door and ask for a rise. Mr Papaioannu was very generous and double our current salary! He probabily realised what a special manager he had under his wing and didn't want to let us fly away!

And now let's get serious. After a bit of transfers we had to start our walk in the Champions League in the second round of qualification. Our draw was very unlucky. With many small teams coming from all the lower countries in Europe we had to draw Dinamo Zagreb. In the first leg in Croatia we played very well, but unfortunatly we made a completely stupid mistake in defense and conceded a gol that forced us to draw. This goal would revel to be fatal, because Dinamo forced extra time in Greece and managed to score the winning goal in the 30 minutes of added time.

We got “relegated” to Europa League, and had to play against the Far Oer side KI. With all due respect, we had to win very comfortably, and that's what we did. 3-1 the home leg and 1-4 the away one, was all it took to get past them. A bit disappointed to have conceded in the onyl shot they had in the second match, but a bit of lapse in concentration after being so up ahead can be forgiven.

Between us and the Group Phase of the Europa League stood Shamrock Rovers. We approached as favourites and won easily the home leg. 5-1 is somewhat of a statement. The return leg is a 3-3 draw, which is worse than a defeat because we were leading 3-0. We need to learn not to take our foot off the gas once we have such huge leads!

After reaching the group stage we got a good amount of money. Not as much as we would have by reaching the CL Group pahse, but good enough to remedie our red balance. For Kalinakis point of view, this competition will only be useful to milk some money, while we have to focus on the League to confirm our great season last year!

ON TOP OF MOUNT OLYMPUS

In the previous update I told you this was a busy summer. And you thought I was referring to a simple European qualification walk? Nah, something much bigger happened: Gustavo Poyet left the greek national team bench o move to Ecuador, and a war raged to become his successor. Apperenly the sails off Zeus favoured Dimitris, who now has the challange to bring Greece back on top of mount Olympus!

We will continue with the double work, with he objective to not get relegated from Nations League A and to qualify for the European Championship in 2028! This is the tactics will be sodale with the tactical traditions of the past. 3-4-2-1 to enchant fans and neutrals!

Hello to all FM fans !

May I ask how can I find Panionios in Super League 2 ?

Thank you.

Hi Kris, Panionios got promoted in the second season from the third division. If you want to play with them you might have to search for a database that unlock Greek's third division, but I don't know where to find it.

HELLENIC MASTERCLASS

Let's pause for a bit the season of Panetolikos and focus on our first games in charge of the Greek National Team. We will compete in Nations League A affter being promoted from NLB under the previous manager. Our objective is to survive here, against Spain, Switzerland and Belgium. 

The first games where a bath of blood, but I think Dimitris was just adjusting to his new role. It might not seem that much as a team, but some of them are European Caliber Players, the likes of which our beloved gaffer has never had the chance to manage! In October we show Spain why we controlled most of the known world a couple of millenials ago: in Nea Filadelfia an absolute Hellenic Masterclass was put on, giving us a 3-0 outstanding win! A win against Switzerland would have save us, but you know, Greeks invented the theater and a little drama had to be built! Fortunately we managed to win against Belgium and save us and relegate the Flemish.

Nextup for Greece there will be the qualifying rounds for he European Championship, the draw was very nice to us and we will face this group as favourites! We will now pause our duties as national manager and finish strong our first european season!

DEFENDING THE TITLE

For the first time in his career, Dimitris had to act as a Champion and defend the title he won, surprisingly, last season. This campaign is somewhat more forgiving, since an additional team will qualify for Champions League football, thanks to the great performance in Europe of our compatriots in he previous seasons.

We had a wonderful season, and reached, on the final machday he top of the league. We will enter the title pool as leader of the pack, but with AEK just one point behind. The spotlight is on Volos, that with only 2 points is entering the relagation pool mathematically relegated! Great season for Ilioupoli that misses the title pool just by 4 points!

We didn't do half bad in EL either, we had some tough games against some big teams, but we won all he game we were supposed to win. Only one draw, but an acrobatic one!

We close the league phase in 14th place, so we will take part in the playoff round. We got drawn to play against the turkish side Istanbul Basaksekir, in a pretty even game. We will see how it went in the next update!

Good season so far, hopefully, you will reach the latter stages of the Europa League.

Not such a good season for Volos though, minus 65 goal difference!

Thank you WAFC Red, we will see how it went today!

CUPS

We, somewhat purposedly, ignored the Greek Cup. We had another deep run, we go vengance against Olympiakos in the quarter finals, but lost to another big rival, AEK, that had already beaten Dimitris in his time at Ilioupoli in the Cup Final. Speaking of Ilioupoli, they reached he semifinal again, but surprisingly they fell against Niki Volou, a rather mediocre team! AEK will probabily win it, but we will be supporting Niki Volou!

Now let's go back to Europe. We are heading to Istanbul to face off against Basaksehir. I expected a fair matchup, but I was pleasantly surprised. Let's say that iff the greeks fought like this against the Ottoman, they would have never had to gain Indipendece from anyone! 1-6 away from home, incredible suff. I don't know what else to say!

The return leg was another dominant performance, but we ended up drawing. One penalty missed and an incredible performance by their MVP keeper saved them from another heavy defeat.

In the round of 16 we will have to fight for our lives against one of the biggest clubs in the competition: Juventus.

Let's cut to the chase. We got eliminated, as we were picked to. But we put on a good show, fought well and draw in Turin after narrowly losing at home. They deserved to go through, but we got eliminated with the honours of war.

The worst news we got from the round of sixteen was the injury to Gelson Martins, who ends his season early. He was magnificent for us and will be a huge absence in the title pool, which is about to begin.

BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

We have finally reached the end of our season. Juventus ended up winning the Europa League and AEK won the Greek Cup, so we can say that we got eliminated from the best in both competitions. 

But now it's out turn to win, a we want to do it big. The title pool has been a theater of harsh battles, with even games against even squads. We performed worse than we did last season, but this year we had all the preassure to repeat the success, while last campaign it was more a surprise!

With one game to go (at home against Olympiacos) we stand in first place with a 3 points advantage on AEK. Since the tiebraker is the head to head, and we hvae won 3 games against AEK and lost one, I'm not sure why we haven't been crowned champions already. 

We lost against Olympiacos and AEK won against Panathinaikos, so we are both squared at 77… who won it all though?

By the skin of our teeth… we are crowned champions!

Dimitris has also to make room in his trophy cabinet for the prize or manager of the year!

We will meet in the next update with the qualification rounds of the Champions League, where we will first face Malmo, champions of Sweden!

CHASING THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DREAM

The third campaign of Dimitris on the bench of Panetolikos starts with two huge games against Malmo. Last season we got kicked out of the Champions League at the very beginning, hopefully we can improve!

A superb first leg allows us to cruise past Malmo, and reach the third round for the first time in team history! Our supporters left the stadiumexctatic! In the return leg we drew 1-1 but deserved to win: we shot a lot and their keeper was basically a wall, while we conceded on their only shot on goal. You live you learn I suppose.

The next round will see us face Astana, Kazakh champs. Definetly easier opponent than Malmo, so shouldn't be a problem.

And a problem it was not. 0-5 in the largest landlocked country in the world, 3-2 at home with a bunch of reserves in. Onto the next round, the playoffs!

To keep chase the Champions League dream we have to face off against Shakthar, a very tough opponent. Champions of Ukraine, they are richer and more equipped than us. But let's go, believe in ourselves and do our best!

A defeat at home, while only 0-1, it's far from ideal. Again our difficulties in front of goal cost us the game.Ukraine is always a tough place to go and play, and going there without and advantage is almost like a death sentence.

Shaktar proved to be too much for us. 3-1 and a script similar to the away leg at Malmo: too easy to pierce us, to hard for us to score, despite the many chances. 

And so Europa League it is! We will do our best to at least confirm the round of sixteen of last season!

DOING THE JOB, AND DOING IT WELL

Let's see how Dimitris has behaved on his other job, with Greece. We have been chasing, in the last year, the qualification to the European Championship that will be held in Galles and Scotland.

Our group was fairly easy, with only Ukraine that could be considered a worthy opponent, and with our big historic rivals o North Macedonia. After a good win against Kosovo and a perfect performance against Canada in a friendly, we fell to our rivals in Tetovo. Luckly the big win against Faroe put us back on tracks straight away. After drawing in Ukraine we managed to win all the remaining games, including a resounding 7-1 against North Macedonia that will be remembered for a long time. 

A job well done that will see us take part in our sixth European Championship. It will probabily not end like it did in 2004, but we will see. 

We will ake part in a very tough group, against the current Champions of France, Czechia and Denmark. The objective is to try an get a ticket for the round of 16, but it will complex, to say the least.

During this run Dimitris got approached by AS Roma, that asked for an interview. Of course he accepted.

And from the interview, came the offer. We are in mid october and Roma is currently 18th in Serie A. 4 points after 6 games is not much, but the league has basically just started and there is a lot of time to improve the situation. Plus they are offering around 1 milion per year more than what Dimitris is earning currently at Panetolikos…

THE ETERNAL CITY

After the Greek Empire came the Romans, and so Dimitris Kalinakis has moved from the Akropolis to the Coloseum! He will manage AS Roma in their centenary season!

The team is currently sitting in 18th, and the board want us to finish mid table. The squad is good and the league is still in the early stages, so I think we can actually overachieve!

The first game against Fiorentina went pretty well given everything. Scoring 3 goals away ffrom home is a very good sign. We go back to the capital with 1 point in our bag. Not bad.

In the meantime Lucescu will be our heir at Panetolikos, good luck to him! Hope he brings a lot of success to them!

MAYBE IS THE MEDITERRANEAN AIR?

Dimitris finished his first season in charge of AS Roma, and it went very nicely, proving that the gamble that he board signing him took paid off. The first win of our campaign came against Genoa, then we manage to draw  in the derby against Lazio which was great, because we had such a low morale that I wasn't sure if we were able to hold our own against them! We lost pretty heavily against Inter (but we gave everything back with interests in the return!) aswell as against Juve and Milan. We won the derby and we had a perfect period of games between February and March.

In the end we finished 5th securing EL football. Given where we started it was a huge success!

In the Italian Cup we arrived to the semifinals and had to yield to Inter. Again a Kalinakis team stops at the semifinals of a domestic cup.

Bad news from our previous teams. Panetelikos with a stinker of a season, finishing outside of the promotion pool, and Ilioupoli got relegated…