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Zio.Fish
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!
Zio.Fish
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!
bigmattb28
Good luck with this
Zio.Fish
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!
Zio.Fish
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!
Zio.Fish
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!
Zio.Fish
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!
Zio.Fish
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!
Zio.Fish
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??
Zio.Fish
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!