Greek Football Report - Part 4: Continental Competitiveness

The final installment of our four-part series entitled Greek Football Report takes a look at the performances of Greek clubs in Europe over the last 20 years. 

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This insight can help offer a glimpse into the overall continental competitiveness of Greek football clubs during that time period as well as provide one with trends as to which way the game in Greece may be heading with respect to the rest of Europe.

A Steady Decline

At the start of the millennium, Greek football was in a strong position compared to the rest of Europe. It was evident at this time that Greece was easily one of the strongest leagues in the second-tier of the European game after the heavyweight countries of Spain, England, Italy, Germany, and France.

Below is a column chart depicting Greece’s UEFA Club Coefficient Country Ranking by year beginning from the 2000/01 season until this season. 

As UEFA states:

“The association club coefficients are based on the results of each association's clubs in the five previous UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League seasons. The rankings determine the number of places allocated to an association (country) in forthcoming UEFA club competition.

In layman's terms the ranking is a reflection based on the performances of a nation’s clubs in European competition over the last five seasons.

Greece began the 2000s ranked 6th out of the 53 countries in Europe. Strong European campaigns in the latter part of the 1990s by the likes of Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, AEK, and PAOK had lifted Greece to the brink of the top five leagues in Europe. During the 2001/02 campaign alone, Greece amassed 11.250 points for the fifth best total in Europe, as Greek clubs beat out France and came close to usurping the total of English Premier Clubs (11.571 points). 

It was a tremendous time period for Greek football in Europe as the nation’s team rubbed shoulders with the European elite and the league was highly respected on the continent.

As the chart shows however, a shift occurs as the 2006/07 season comes with Greece going down to 15th place after a couple of barren seasons on the European stage. Improvement is made in the following seasons and by 2011/12 the Greek clubs manage to get the country back into the top ten.

That would be as high as Greece would climb though. The last decade has Greece trending not only out of the top 10, but now heading toward its lowest-ever ranking with a current standing of 17th place. If this slide continues then it will have massive implications heading into the future. The lower the country’s ranking, the less European teams they will receive to participate in the Champions’ League, Europa League, and the newest competition, the Europa Conference League. And conversely, the fewer teams a country enters into European competitions the more difficult it is to gain points to move up the rankings.

Giant-killings to gigantic collapses

A Greek team has never won a European title, the closest a side has ever come was Panathinaikos losing in the European Cup final in 1971 to Ajax at Wembley Stadium in London, England.

In the last few decades, the best performances in that same competition, rebranded as the Champions’ League in 1992, has been Olympiacos’ quarter-final defeat to Juventus in 1999 and Panathinaikos’ loss to Barcelona at the same stage in 2002. Both teams were close to going through, but were ultimately defeated by their more illustrious rivals. 

Since then there have been a series of trips by Olympiacos to the Round of 16 of the Champions’ League with defeats at that stage to Chelsea (07/08), Bordeaux (09/10), and Manchester United (13/14). Panathinaikos also went to the knockout round in 2008/09, losing to Villarreal in the last sixteen.

In Europa League play, Olympiacos have made four trips to the Round of 16 in the last 15 years, (04/05, 11/12, 16/17, 19/20) including one during the current campaign where they knocked out Arsenal and now await a second leg away to Wolves after a 1-1 draw in Piraeus just before football stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. AEK have also made it to the Round of 16 three times since 2000 (00/01, 01/02, 02/03). Panathinaikos lost in the Round of 16 in 2009/10 and since the turn of the millennium have reached further than any Greek team in the Europa League with a quarter-final place in 2002/03 when they went out on away goals to Porto.

Greek sides are still capable of pulling off upsets. Olympiacos showed this by eliminating Arsenal from the Europa League this season and the Erythrolefki have recorded victories over the likes of Atletico Madrid, Juventus, and AC Milan in recent seasons. In the last five years, PAOK have victories to show over teams such as Fiorentina and Borussia Dortmund.

These results though are now the big exceptions. Greek teams were consistently going out of Europe in the knockout rounds 15-20 years against huge clubs. Barcelona, Juventus, Chelsea, Manchester United, PSG, and Porto were the type of sides that Greece’s best were going down to. In recent seasons that has changed. The caliber of teams that are defeating Greek teams are now much lower. A few years ago who would have believed that Greek sides would lose handily to clubs such as Qarabag, Ostersund, and Vidi? Or that elimination in Europe would occur against teams like Metalist Kharkiv or Gabala? Not many would have believed that Olympiacos would record only three wins in their last 18 Group Stage matches or that AEK would taste defeat in all six of their CL games in the 2018/19 campaign.

Part of the problem is that with the lower coefficient ranking, Greek teams must now qualify for the Group Stages of the Champions’ League and Europa League. This makes the route to the main part of these competitions much more difficult to reach. Olympiacos needed three playoff victories just to qualify for the Champions’ League this season. AEK, Atromitos, and Aris all failed to reach the Europa League Group Stage this season because they failed to advance through two or three qualifying rounds. 

Compare this to when Greece had a high UEFA ranking. Take the 2003/04 season when Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, and AEK all participated in the Group Stage of the Champions’ League, with Olympiacos and Panathinaikos qualifying directly for the competition and AEK needing to advance through one qualifying round. 

SUMMARY

The economic crisis over the last decade has had a devastating effect on Greek society, this is also true for football. Greek teams used to be able to make big money moves for big-name players. Rivaldo, Giovanni, Djibril Cisse, and Gilberto Silva are just a small sample of the types of names that the Greek league could attract. That all changed with the crisis, but that is only part of the explanation of Greece’s plummeting European rank.

External factors are also at play. While the purchasing power of Greek clubs has dwindled, other countries from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia have become wealthier. Whether rich investors have taken control or if the clubs have simply done a terrific job of bringing young talent through and selling players off for vast sums, many leagues around the continent have become richer and thus more able to attract higher quality players.

Greece are also paying for their lack of investment in academy players. Not only have Greek clubs failed to give younger players opportunities to play they have continued to buy foreign players. The main problem with this is that now the average player from abroad is simply lower in quality than they used to be able to buy. 

Other nations have pulled ahead and Greek clubs in Europe seem as though they simply cannot keep up. That’s at least what the rankings indicate. There are rarer instances of Greek teams able to make it far in European competitions and the future looks difficult. There lies a tougher road ahead with a lower UEFA coefficient and thus fewer sides from Greece participating in European competition - and those that are needing to negotiate passage through more qualifying rounds.  

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