Apostolos Nikolaidis (athlete)

Football player infobox
playername = Apostolos Nikolaidis
fullname =
height =
dateofbirth = 1896
cityofbirth = Plovdiv
dateofdeath = death date and age|1980|10|15|1896|1|1
cityofdeath =
countryofdeath = Greece
countryofbirth = Bulgaria
years = ?-1916
1916-17
1917-?
clubs = Kadıköyspor
Fenerbahçe
Panathinaikos
caps(goals) =
nationalyears =
nationalteam = Greece
nationalcaps(goals) =

Apostolos Nikolaidis ( _el. Απόστολος Νικολαΐδης) (1896 – 15 October 1980) was a Greek athlete. He marked multisport club Panathinaikos (PAO) with his personality during the first years of the intervening period between the two world wars.

Biography

He was born in Plovdiv ( _el. Philippoupolis), Bulgaria. He was an athletic phenomenon, as he competed in decathlon, football, basketball and volleyball. After his graduation from the Robert College in Istanbul, he moved to Athens in 1917 and joined the family of Panathinaikos. He was a member of the Greek Olympic team of 1920 (at Antwerp), both as a football player and as a track athlete. He played football for more than ten years. He contributed to all sections of PAO.

In 1926-27 he was elected president of EPO (the Hellenic Football Federation), while after the German occupation (1945) and for a period of about twenty years he also was President of SEGAS (the Hellenic Association of Amateur Athletics). For decades he was a counselor of Panathinaikos and in 1974 he became President.

Upon his death, as an honor, his coffin was carried on the shoulders of athletes from all PAO sections: Economopoulos, Camaras, Antoniadis (football), Zaharopoulos (track), Georgantis, Eliopoulos (volleyball), Garos, Calogeropoulos (basketball). After his death, the home stadium of Panathinaikos at Leoforos Alexandras was named after him in 1981, at a ceremony presided by then Prime Minister George Rallis.

Controversy

Nikolaidis is a controversial figure. Although considered by many as the patriarch of the family of Panathinaikos, he is responsible for one of the biggest crises in the history of the club, the breakaway of 1931. While he was the president of the club, he had a major dispute with Angelos Messaris, the best player of the team. The dispute was about Messaris wanting to study engineering at NTUA, while Nikolaidis did not want him to be involved in anything except football. It was rumoured that Nikolaidis was involved in Messaris' application being rejected three times from NTUA. This dispute led Messaris to quit football altogether, much to the dismay of a significant number of players and administratives, who sided behind Stamatios Merkouris, the son of Athens' mayor at the time. Merkouris challenged Nikolaidis authority, eventually leading to presidential elections. Nikolaidis won by a small margin and he immediately ousted from Panathinaikos all those who stood against him, including a figure with mythical proportions to Panathinaikos fans, the founder of the club George Kalafatis. Although most of them joined again the team twenty years later, this action was never forgiven by a large portion of the fans.

External links

* [http://www.pao.gr/document.php?category_id=97&document_id=3131 Apostolos Nikolaidis' history from Panathinaikos FC official website]