Batatoudis still running PAOK?

[Ziaka]

The following are two articles that appeared in Goalday.gr over the weekend suggesting that PAOK is still in the hands of Georgios Batatoudis:

[Ziaka]

The following is an article from Periklis Stellas of Goalnews, who writes articles concerning Thessaloniki teams for the newspaper. Also remember that he is the journalist who was recently attacked by unknown assailants.

Panoramix: A

[Batigol]

Pretty dire straits eh?

I'd like to address some points Ziaka also brought up from another post with regards to PAOK being tossed down to the D' division.

Part of me would be saddened by the thought of the club being relegated in such a fashion. But there is a part of me that wouldn't be bothered by it at all too.

PAOK have reached such a bad state in the last few years that the only way to clean up the situation would be to make it so that corrupt businessmen who only seek to use PAOK and its reputation to further their own business interests, at the expense of PAOK, don't get into ownership. There isn't any hard money to be made off of a D' division club. Hell, there is hardly any to be made off of an A' division club for that matter.

Really, we could probably count on one hand the number of clubs that make any type of profit in the A' Ethniki.

PAOK's present position is one where they're going to be cycling through the same set of crappy owners every few years. Nothing is going to get better. But things certainly get worse with the increase in debts and empty promises.

The story about Batitoudis doesn't surprise me. After all, he still owns the boutique. Probably one of the only things that has relatively low overhead and a very high potential to make money.

The fact that these politicians have become involved does surprise me to a certain extent. By sticking their own necks out, they have left themselves open to a certain amount of liability. More importantly however, the involvement of these politicians also shows the stupidity of the ownership/administration of the club. What were they thinking involving people who could influence things in a positive matter? I can only speculate in how much money alloted from UEFA lined their pockets.

In any event, the political will to help the club has been misguided at best. PAOK neither has the clout or the basic administarial focus to run things properly. Are we at all surprised then at the present outcome?

If PAOK do get stiffed, we could at least hope that it might improve the overall nature of the club and its problem with hooliganism.

[Serraios]

well Batatoudis has come out now and said that what was stated was not true and that he does not own the shares, and that they were tranfered to goumenos and co.

Only on Greece & perhaps Italy can this sort of thing happen. :tdown: