Atromitos and Gianniotis smash club records in astonishing start
An enthralling start to the 2017/2018 Super League season has seen plenty of thrilling matches take place, but one team has stood out above the rest. Atromitos Athens, a reasonably small capital club, has defied all odds to lead the way in the standings.
After finishing in eighth place last season, no-one had Atromitos down as one of the potential challengers to Olympiacos’ crown. However, Atromitos proved that they cannot be taken lightly. The Athens outfit currently occupy first place in the Super League standings, with stand-out results including two stunning 1:0 victories against Olympiacos and AEK, wins which came as a huge shock.
The only undefeated team in the league, Atromitos hold a slender one point lead over second placed PAOK after nine rounds. Their early season success is a real turn-up for the books, especially given that Austrian head coach Damir Canadi only signed in the summer. A staggering fourteen new players joined the club for this campaign, but Canadi has managed to create a solid unit which is smashing club records. Unsurprisingly, nineteen points in just nine matches is Atromitos’ best ever start to a Super League season.
One of the biggest reasons behind Atromitos’ success is goalkeeper Andreas Gianniotis, a 24 year old who joined on a free from Olympiacos in the summer transfer window. Gianniotis has been simply unbeatable in the Atromitos goal, helping his team keep an amazing seven clean sheets on the bounce. Atromitos has only conceded three goals so far, and those were all scored with Serbian Nikola Mirkovic between the sticks. Given Olympiacos’ troubles, surely there are some figures in Piraeus who are ruing their decision to let Gianniotis leave...
Aided by a watertight defence, Gianniotis has not let in a goal for 633 minutes, something which has not been witnessed for a number of years. This achievement has allowed Gianniotis to break the Atromitos record for shutout streaks, beating the previous best of 617 minutes from the 1997/1998 season.
Nevertheless, Gianniotis still has a way to go if he is to earn a Greek record. At the moment, he owns eleventh place in the all-time Greek championship shutout streak list:
- Takis Oikonomopoulos, 1178 minutes (1965)
- Vassilis Konstantinou, 998 minutes (1980)
- Jozef Wandzik, 906 minutes (1993)
- Vassilis Konstantinou, 847 minutes (1981)
- Balazs Megyeri, 716 minutes (2013)
- Nikos Sarganis, 714 minutes (1981)
- Dimitris Eleftheropoulos, 706 minutes (2000)
- Giorgos Sidiropoulos, 700 minutes (1976)
- Takis Oikonomopoulos, 692 minutes (1973)
- Antonis Tzanetoulakos, 691 minutes (1973)
- Andreas Gianniotis, 663 minutes (2017)
