AEK Athens’ future appears bright

AEK Athens, or popularly known as its nickname Queen, is one of the top 4 football clubs in Greece with current league champs Olympiacos, PAOK FC and Panathinaikos FC being the rest. Previous season was a total disaster for AEK Athens both outside and inside the field.

Inside the football field, Athens could not manage relegation for the very first time in its history to Greek Football’s 2nd division. And outside the ground, the Greek club confronted many financial problems. Because of all these problems, AEK Athens declared bankruptcy as well as amateur AEK passed on to Football League 2, which is the top amateur division club in Greece.

AEK Athens appeared to be doomed but Dimitrios Melissanidis to intervene. He won the AEK amateur elections and became the club’s owner. Dimitrios is a well known Greek shipping magnate and oil tycoon and he has served as the AEK president in 1992-1993, 1994-1995 and 1998-1999 seasons. After that ENIC Group was its shareholder.

Melissanidis’ family came from Caucasus in Pontos, but he was born in Athens. Since the time that Dimitrios took over Athens, he managed to get huge sponsorships for the team like OPAP (Greece's gambling monopoly), the contract with Fujitsu as well as the deal with Greek Telecommunication body Nova Sports. More than that Dimitrios also revealed plans to make a brand new stadium in Athens, in the very same spot where the old AEK Athens stadium was.