They say that sport teaches its participants valuable life lessons about both winning and losing. But for some those lessons come at a hefty price. Spare a thought for Olympiakos’s players who earlier this week were slapped with a 400,000 Euro fine by club owner Evangelos Marinakis.
The fine followed Olympiakos’s 1-1 away draw against Levadiakos on the resumption of the Greek Super League last weekend, which left it trailing league leader AEK by nine points with just four founds of the season to play. The very real probability that Olympiakos will relinquish the league title for the first time in eight seasons, resulted in Marinakis venting his spleen at the players at training on Monday evening.
Marinakis told the players, “Even though you have been so bad this year, you could still have won the championship, but you lost it when not protesting the foul for AEK’s winning goal in Piraeus and Panathinaikos’ ghost penalty,” raged Marinakis. “You didn’t even complain! You will be fined 200,000 euros for the game against Panathinaikos, and a further 200 thousand for the match with Levadiakos. All of this money will go towards Olympiakos’ academy teams, because they love this club and the fans much more than you do.”
It’s not the first time Marinakis has issued large fines to his own team. Three years ago he fined the team 500,000 Euros after a run of ordinary results.
Last Monday he went a step further and told the players that a number of them would be replaced for the remainder of the season by U 20 players.
“From now on, we will continue playing only with our U20 players and some of you. Only those who love the club will play for Olympiakos, we want to immediately rebuild for next season. The players from the academy definitely want it more and they will play the remaining matches.”
“You have it all, but you have no respect. You only care about your houses and cars, not the club. When I come back next time, I only want to see the honest guys here, those who love and respect Olympiakos.”
Marinakis pointed the blame at Olympiakos’s lack of success this season, squarely at the players, adding “This season, you’ve had three coaches. However, it turns out that you are to blame, not the managers.”
However it seems this couldn’t save coach Oscar Garcia his job as he was relieved of his duties the following day. The forty four year old Spaniard departs after just three months in the job.