“Records are meant to be broken,” say the athletes, and Dimitris Andreopoulos belongs to both athletes and record breakers. The coach of the Panathinaikos men’s volleyball team will wear a shamrock on his chest for the coming season, and with this signature, he has become the division’s longest-serving coach. The 58-year-old has served the club both as a player and as a coach for over… half of his life. “Panathinaikos for life,” he declared with a laugh. cathimerini.gr.

Dimitris Andreopoulos was born in Corinth and started playing volleyball at the age of 15 for the local team Palaimonas Corinth. Very quickly, stories about his talent and athletic abilities “crossed” the Isthmus of Corinth and “reached” the Athenian clubs.

“I played for the local Corinthian team and in 1983, thanks to the intervention of the then president of Panathinaikos, Giorgos Vardinogiannis, I got a transfer to the club,” he told us, and when we asked him if the Greek province was important. reservoir” for sports, he replied: “Yes, there are children from the provinces who get into the teams. What plays a role in the development of a young talented athlete is the combination of situations: there must be a corresponding interest from the side of the club and, of course, from the first coaches. The combination of both gives impetus to a talented child.

As a player, Dimitris Andreopoulos played for Panathinaikos until 2000. Then for two years he will work at the club as an assistant coach at the direction of Roberto Cerniotti, and then, from 2002 to 2004, he will head the women’s team of the department. The seasoned coach will once again wear the green uniform in 2014, and from then to this day, he has remained the first coach in his heart’s team. With her flowers in 2020, he will become the second Panathinaikos athlete to have a championship title in his collection, both as a player and as a coach (the first is Stelios Kazazis). Then others will follow.

“The league has been very competitive in recent years. In the men’s league, we are lucky that four teams are fighting for the title. And I call it luck because few foreign leagues have so many strong teams. This is what makes our league not only competitive, but also beautiful, ”the 58-year-old coach emphasized.

“We are not a small and medium group”

In the current season, Panathinaikos in the two main titles for which he claimed was close to … a tap, but did not drink water. “We have built a good team to claim titles in Greece and Europe. We won the Super Bowl and the League Cup. In the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup and the championship, we did not manage to achieve anything more in detail. Of course, we would like to win another trophy, but in sports you are not alone. In that particular period of time, our opponents were better and beat us. It was a year of mixed emotions. We have achieved some of their goals, some not. But this is a sport. Panathinaikos now claims all titles. He threw on himself a small and medium team of yesteryear.

After completing the games of the current season, Dimitris Andreopoulos began to build a team for the next season. “I can say that I was pleased with the efforts of the children. For the next championship, I will keep most of the backbone of the team and strengthen it. The mood will be the same: to fight for all the titles,” the coach told us, and when asked if he misses his son from the team, he answered: “All young guys are chasing their dreams. The same with Charalambos Andreopoulos. It’s positive and I like it.”

Dimitris Andreopoulos has over 200 caps as an athlete. From 2018 to 2021, he was also at the “helm” of the representative group as a coach. It was inevitable that the debate would also reach the national level. “Since 2018, the Federation has been making efforts. Our team will reach the final phase of the European Championship for the third time in a row. In 2019 and 2021 I was a coach. He will play again this year. This shows that there is progress. On the other hand, in previous years there was a gap, as a result of which many countries caught up with us and overtook us. So the efforts made by the national team in Europe or in the world are complex.”