{"id":249010,"date":"2026-04-20T16:10:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/?p=249010"},"modified":"2026-04-20T16:12:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T13:12:34","slug":"100-years-of-paok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/100-years-of-paok\/","title":{"rendered":"100 years of PAOK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>by Christos Zabounis<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>If there is one type of PAOK supporter I envy, it is the Athenian one. I come across them in the most unexpected places, and the stories they tell about how they chose a team from Thessaloniki never cease to surprise me. For those of us born in the North &#8211; and in my case, raised in Toumba &#8211; the choice is fairly easy to understand. But what explains the nationwide reach of a sports club founded by refugees from Constantinople in 1926? How did it manage to prevail over teams with longer histories and deeper roots in the city, such as Aris and Iraklis? What is this so-called \u201cgenome,\u201d or DNA, that goes beyond stadiums and playing fields? Why has PAOK become a matter of identity? These questions, and many more, are addressed by an Athenian PAOK supporter, the historian Nikos Giannopoulos, in his book \u201cPAOK 1926\u20132026: The 100+1 Most Important Matches\u201d (Metaichmio Publications). The title should not be misleading. This is not a match commentary, but a systematic research study that follows, from within, the course of the Panthessalonian Athletic Club of Constantinopolitans. Chapters such as \u201cAlexander the Great Steals the Spotlight from the \u2018Flying Dutchman,\u2019\u201d \u201cTorpedoing the \u2018Yellow Submarine,\u2019\u201d \u201cAK-47 (Avtomat Kalashnikova),\u201d and \u201cThe Cannon Shot at the \u2018Gunners\u2019\u201d take us through the team\u2019s glorious moments, without overlooking the tragic ones. \u201cYour absence weighs on us, your memory unites us\u201d (Panhellenic PAOK Supporters Club of Athens) is the title of the final chapter, dedicated to the eight young supporters who lost their lives on the so-called highway connecting Bucharest to Timi\u0219oara, on their way to Lyon. May their memory be eternal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Christos Zabounis If there is one type of PAOK supporter I envy, it is the Athenian one. I come across them in the most unexpected places, and the stories they tell about how they chose a team from Thessaloniki never cease to surprise me. For those of us born in the North &#8211; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":249006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18496],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249012,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249010\/revisions\/249012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mancodestyle.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}