This summer was disaster for Greek volley popularity. More of the teams had economical problems and forced to reduce their budget in half. Miljkovic, Tischer, Kunnari agreed to continue their careers in different championships.
Ivan Miljkovic, Agamez and Simon Tischer chose the turkish championship. Zagumny, Samica, Yordanov and Kovacevic had also left for economical reasons. Olympiakos, Iraklis and EAPatron are the teams which had tried to close their roster as soon as possible. Panathinaikos is in the worst situation of the team history and everybody in the team hope to find some sponsors to help them buying quality foreign players.
In this first part of Greek Championship presentation we will try to analyze Olympiakos transfers…
Olympiakos team had changed all the foreign players. Great players such as Tischer, Kunari, Miljkovic and Leonardo Caldeira left the team. On the other hand the new Olympiakos coach Flavio Gulinelli, using lower budget succeed to replace them by taking Zekov Andrey (from EA Patron, Jiri Kral (from Iraklis) and by bringing in Greece Jason Jablonsky and Rolando Jurquin Despaigne. Olympiakos agreed with last year’s best Greek young player of the champion Andrea Fragos from Panellinios. In the team of Athens return the mibbleblocker Papazoglou who will find a very talented young setter Filipov.
The advantages of this young team will be the powerful front line with Andreadis, Kral, Papazoglou and a great couple of outside hitters with Jason Jablonsky and Rolando Jurquin Despaigne. In setter position Andrey Zekov has the experience and Filipov the talent to organize the team.
Disadvantages of the team are the inexperience of the most players and the reception problem after missing Stefanou (Libero) and Kunari. In diagonal Mitar Tzourits will try a lot to make the Olympiakos fans forget Ivan Milkovic. Also there are rumors about an unexpected injury problem of Zekov but the doctors of the team are not so worried. Although Olympiakos had bigger budget than the other Greek teams Flavio Gulinelli will have to try hard to win the Championship for the third time in a row.
In the next Greek Champion article we will present Iraklis and EAPatron.
