The words a physio says slowly. 152 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.23 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PAOK heard it as anything else.
Soualiho Meïté was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Luka Ivanušec. 2‑0 against AEL Larisa, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
In brief
Boardroom139% of the income goes out in wages at PAOK
SquadRoberto Pereyra falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 57 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.00 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
28 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 9.72 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
In brief
Squad7 new faces, and PAOK are still learning each other
65 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PAOK lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Position 2, 15 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.98 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Soualiho Meïté was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
43 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
The words a physio says slowly. 75 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 17 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
The words a physio says slowly. 82 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.62 at 38, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 17 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
Soualiho Meïté was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
The words a physio says slowly. 91 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 34 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Kostas Souvlatzis could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 8.14
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 8.14, 1 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
27 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Andrija Živković was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
At 17 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
In brief
SquadWords at PAOK training over how hard people work
The words a physio says slowly. 98 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad21 Sep 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Andrija Živković's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Shots: 12. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Two goals and a mark of 9.11 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kostas Souvlatzis is 17, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Charalampos Lykogiannis was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Rafael Baca. 3‑1 against Levadiakos, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PAOK heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Two goals and a mark of 9.13 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Giorgos Giakoumakis was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
4 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Alexandros Siovas is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Nikolaos Samaris has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Georgios Alexiou is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Konstantinos Alexiou has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Soualiho Meïté is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Jerson Malagón arrives at 33 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at PAOK would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
The chase for Pavlos Pantelidis ended with $2.4M changing hands and Panathinaikos out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
The fee is $1.9M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Aris Thessaloniki drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Christos Zafeiris was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Roberto Pereyra is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad17 Aug 2026
7 new faces, and PAOK are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Fenerbahce paid $12.8M and PAOK took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Charalampos Lykogiannis is living that version at PAOK, and it tends to show in the first month.
Christos Zafeiris was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The name of Abdelhamid Sabiri has come up in conversations PAOK were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
The name of Giannis Konstantelias has come up in conversations PAOK were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PAOK heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Soualiho Meïté is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.