Papanikolaou: “Olympiacos is family to me”

He spoke on his site about his childhood, what the club itself means, and shared unknown stories of his life. With a pleasant initiative, Olympiacos BC decided to pass its players a “interrogation” for their daily lives at the age of ten! The first interview belonged to the team leader Kostas Papanikolaou, who wanted to make a flashback in his childhood when he lived in Grevena. CORVERSE The 34-year-old basketball player spoke about his habits and hobbies then, his relationship with sport, but also about how Olympiacos has shaped his life and career. The words of “Papp” 10 years old lived… “in Grevena”. I lived together… “with my parents, my brother. Well, I’ve been having a really nice, very carefree time. Beautiful city. I had my friends, nice, nice, game all day.” CORVERSE The pets we had at the time… “we didn’t have pets.” I went to school… “Municipal I was 10, yes. First primary school in Grevenon. Honored!”. My best friend was called… “George Blancos and he is my best man until today. We have been together since kindergarten.” People called me… “Papannik and shot called me sometime, but I don’t know why.” The basketball team in which I played… “I hadn’t even started 10 years of basketball yet, the truth is. I played volleyball at the Grevenon Gymnastics Association. And then I started basketball at the Grevenon Proteus Club”. My favorite player was… “At 10 to tell you the truth, I wasn’t watching basketball”. My favorite TV program was… “Look then, at that time we were watching “Men and Don”. We were also seeing Fearless, with Tarusa!”. For breakfast I ate at that age… “I drank a glass of milk and then ate a cheese pie during the first break.” I was on vacation… “Our vacations over the years have been in the New Ports of Pieria, an amazing beach. We were having a wonderful time. We sat there for a week, Mom brought from the village and we spent meatballs, stuffed, stuffing, stuffing, things like that, it was a mess.” In my wallet I had… “I didn’t have a 10-year-old wallet, guys! Whatever allowance Dad gave me went straight to electronics.” I was going to bed… “let’s say 10:00.” What I loved to do at the age of 10 was… “Okay game all day. Out. My brother and I played a lot at home, but we were kids who wanted to hang out, we wanted to play with our friends. We played terrible back in Grevena, we played terrible games, ball chase, I remember. The guy he was chasing had a ball and we were setting boundaries inside the city and the guy he was chasing had to catch you with the ball. But the boundaries were long, we ran through Grevena, into the pits, into the stuff… We also played hide and seek! Which was what? It was a can pressed, which we put as a sign. There was the one who was guarding. It was like a hide-and-seek, but with that, so what happened to free them all if we were playing five people and they had the four, the last one left had to go kick that before the other guy stepped on it. Very nice game, it’s nicer than I describe it to you.” The dumbest thing I had done then… “I had broken my arm! He had a big downhill there in Grevena. I had a bike from a friend. And I was going down a long way. In Grevena, if you put and look at Google Maps, there are some big downhills leading to the main square. And I was coming down from there. And in front of me was a grandfather. The bike had no brakes, I was yelling at Grandpa to get out of the front, Grandpa wouldn’t listen to me and so that I wouldn’t run into Grandpa, I went riding the sidewalk in my attempt to avoid him, I left with my head, I fell down with my hand and broke it.” The man I copied was… “All right, my brother, as older, I had him as a role model”. My favorite place on earth was… “My village. The village of my father Dialect Trikala and my mother Light Trikala. If I had to choose one of two it would be the dialect.” My worst habit was… “eat my nails”. My favorite game was… “Besides my hidden, favorite game then it was, you know, where we gathered and played football, say, with my friends in the square.” I eagerly expected that dinner would be… “what we had as special, became once in a while, was pizza.” If I had 100 euros, I’d waste it… ‘It depends on the period. By the time the cloth papers were released then, I’d give 100 euros to a cloth. Otherwise, chocolates”. But sports I liked were… “the volleyball I played at the time. I had also made a leap in height shortly after I also liked it very much. Football always drew me but I never played, I didn’t bother to go to any team etc.” Apart from sports, I liked it… “When I was a kid, in my village, I liked helping in the church. I went to church because I liked to help. Because my friend from the village was an altar boy, so when I went either Christmas or Easter or summer, I liked to go.” Closing, instead of an epilogue, I want you to tell us what Olympiacos is to you: “Olympiacos, for me is the family. It’s my second house, it’s memories, it’s thrills, it’s beautiful moments, it’s hard times, it’s big moments. It’s half my life, actually. It’s my whole life sports. It’s something unique.”