In the modern era, however, association football was introduced to the Greeks by expatriate British communities and military personnel. The first Greek football teams were created as part of long-established athletic and gymnastic clubs in the major port cities of Athens and Thessaloniki, as well as among the large Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire, such as Constantinople and Smyrna, in the early 1900s. After the Asia Minor Disaster of 1922 which resulted in a large resettlement of Greeks from Turkey to Greece, several clubs, such as Panionios and Apollon Smyrnis, were transplanted, while many athletes of other clubs, like Pera, formed new organizations in their new home (e.g. AEK, PAOK).
The first league of professional football in Greece was officially established as the Panhellenic Championship in 1927. The league ran until 1959, when it was replaced by the Alpha Ethniki which ran until 2006 when it was then replaced by Super League Greece. According to FIFPRO, an organization that represents professional players, nearly 70 percent of players complained in a 2011 survey of problems with not being paid.[13]
Superleague Greece is the top-flight professional football division within Greece. The league contains 14 clubs, with the winners of the league becoming the Champions of Greece. The team with the most national championships is Olympiacos, who have won 48 times - 14 Super League titles, 19 Alpha Ethniki titles and 15 Panhellenic Championships.[14] Two other P.O.K. clubs also dominate the history of Greek football; Panathinaikos with 20 titles and AEK Athens with 13 titles.[14]
Cup competitions
There is currently one major cup competition in Greek football, the Greek Cup. It includes clubs from the 2 professional leagues in Greece, Super League 1 and Super League 2. Until 2008, another major cup competition was the Greek Super Cup, an annual game held between the winner of the Greek Super League and Greek Cup that will be reinstated from 2025-2026 season and there will be again two major cup competitions in Greek football from then on.
Club sides may qualify to play in European tournaments under the jurisdiction of UEFA. The champions of Super League qualify for the group stage of the following season's UEFA Champions League. The teams finishing in second to fifth position qualify for a round-robinplayoff, the winner of which will enter the Champions League at the Third Qualifying Round. The other three teams will qualify for the following season's UEFA Europa League, at the Play-off, Third Qualifying or Second Qualifying Round stage, dependent on their performance in the national level playoff. The winner of the Greek Cup also qualifies for the Europa League. If this club has already qualified for a UEFA competition then the place is given to the runners-up.[15][16]
↑ἐπίσκυρος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
12The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007 Edition: "In ancient Greece a game with elements of football, episkuros, or harpaston, was played, and it had migrated to Rome as harpastum by the 2nd century BC".
12φαινίνδα, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
↑Nigel Wilson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Routledge, 2005, p. 310
↑Nigel M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome), The University of North Carolina Press, 1995, on Google Books
↑Steve Craig, Sports and Games of the Ancients: (Sports and Games Through History), Greenwood, 2002, on Google Books
↑Don Nardo, Greek and Roman Sport, Greenhaven Press, 1999, p. 83
↑Sally E. D. Wilkins, Sports and games of medieval cultures, Greenwood, 2002, on Google books
↑Another Victim of Global Financial Crisis: Pro Soccer Players, New York Times, March 24, 2014.
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