By Nikos Varlas
The two “eternal” enemies of Greek basketball will be rivals not only in the court in the Greek league finals (and who knows, maybe even in the Euroleague Final Four), but also in the courtroom.
The vice-president of Olympiacos, Yiorgos Skindilias, sued Thanasis Giannakopoulos, the co-owner of Panathinaikos, for verbal abuse and slander.
This is a first in the history of skirmishes between the brass of the two teams. Never before, they haven’t appealed to criminal justice for settling the score between them. In theory this not the case either. From a legal standpoint this is a case between two individuals, Skindilias and Giannakopoulos. But behind those two guys there are two powerhouse teams, that have a total of five millions of fans rooting for them in Greece!
The cause of the lawsuit are the words of Thanasis Giannakopoulos against Yiorgos Skindilias in the office of the central referees committee in the 23th of February 2012.
The exact quotes of Giannakopoulos that are used in the legal document were absolutely insulting for Skindilias. Quotes like: “I wear pants and you wear skirts”, “F… you”, “In my b…”, etc.
In the same day, just half an hour before lashing out to Skindilias the Green’s boss in the security meeting for the Greek Cup final had said that he had fornicated Europe six teams.
The title of the Eurohoops.net post about that was “Endless Story”. That was a mistake. The correct title now is “The great war is just starting”!