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Apostolos Nikolaidis (Greek: Απόστολος Νικολαΐδης, 1896 – 15 October 1980) was a Greek athlete, football manager and businessman. He was a leading board member and president of Panathinaikos.
Biography
He was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. After his graduation from the Robert College in Istanbul, he moved to Athens in 1917 and joined the family of Panathinaikos. He was an athletic phenomenon, as he successfully competed in decathlon, football, basketball and volleyball. He was a member of the Greek Olympic team of 1920 (in Antwerp), both as a football player and as a track athlete. He played football for more than ten years and contributed to all sports departments of PAO. He was also manager of the Greece national football team. He even became a successful racing driver.
In 1926-27 he was elected president of the Hellenic Football Federation whereas, after the German occupation (1945) and for a period of more than twenty years, he was president of the Hellenic Amateur Athletic Association. Moreover, he was president of the Automobile and Touring Club of Greece. For many decades, he was a board member of Panathinaikos and in 1974 he became president of the club. He was also the owner of Softex, a paper towel company.
Upon his death, as an honour, his coffin was carried on the shoulders of eight athletes from different PAO departments: Ikonomopoulos, Kamaras, Antoniadis (football), Zacharopoulos (track), Georgantis, Iliopoulos (volleyball), Garos, Kalogeropoulos (basketball). The home stadium of Panathinaikos at Alexandras Avenue was named after him in 1981, at a ceremony presided by the then Prime Minister Georgios Rallis.
Controversy
Although considered by most as the "Patriarch" of Panathinaikos, Nikolaidis was responsible for one of the biggest crises in the history of the club, the breakaway 1931. While he was a leading board member of the club, he had a major dispute with Angelos Messaris, the best player of the team. The dispute was about Messaris wanting to study engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, while Nikolaidis did not want him to be involved in anything except football. It was rumoured that Nikolaidis was involved in Messaris' application being rejected three times by NTUA. This dispute led Messaris to quit football altogether, much to the dismay of a significant number of players and administratives, who sided behind Stamatis Merkouris, the son of Athens' Mayor at the time. Merkouris challenged Nikolaidis' authority, eventually leading to a poll. Nikolaidis won by a small margin and he immediately ousted from Panathinaikos all those who stood against him, including a figure with mythical proportions to PAO fans, the founder of the club Giorgos Kalafatis. Although many of them joined the team again later, this action was never forgiven by a portion of the fans.
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