By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
In its final verdict about the case of the quarterfinal cup game between Panathinaikos and Olympiacos the Greek highest council for solving sports difference (ΑΣΕΑΔ) decide that the win is adjudicated to the Greens. Panathinaikos won a case that was judge four times and wll play against PAOK for the semifinals of the Cup.
The quartefinal game was played on the 9th of October but the verdict which finally favors Panathinaikos was produced four months later. The Greens have won the game by a point (77-76), but the Reds protested the result because of the presence at OAKA of then punished president of Panathinaikos, Dimitris Giannakopoulos, who didn’t have the right to attend.
Initially the sports jugde of the Greek league didn’t produced any verdict of the case, saying that he was unfit to judge the protest of Olympiacos. The Reds took the case to ΑΣΕΑΔ which decided that the sports jugde was capable of a verdict. His verdict was awarding the win to the Reds and it was time for the Greeks to go to ΑΣΕΑΔ. This time the highest council decided that Panathinaikos should be awarded the win and Dimitris Giannakopoulos was fined with 50.000 euros.
Panathinaikos issued a press release about the matter in which the club congratulates Olympiacos for the making the wish of young Spiros Kavadas true, but adds: “For us an other fight starts now. Everything that happened since October until February are UNACCEPTABLE and have to concern the authorities. SOMEONE should be considered responsible for all those scandalous tricks that tried to present as legally based an injustice.
Panathinaikos BC out of responsibility to the fans, promises that it will do anything in order to uncover the people behind this sad conspiracy, people that put dinamite on the foundations of Greek sports in order to get a result. We hope that the state authorities will stand besides us”.