Aquatic Dreams

Two renowned Greek coaches who joined Olympiacos when they were kids, grew to manhood in the Club’s red and white cap, then became noted coaches of—respectively—its men’s and women’s water polo teams.

When

Thodoris Vlachos, a kid from Volos, found himself in the first Olympiacos team ever to win the Greek Cup and the championship—its first title in 21 years—in the same season, in 1992 (and the team which beat Ethnikos in the championship for the first time in 19 years), he couldn’t have imagined that he would go on to become one of the top coaches of both the Reds and the Greek national team.

He won 10 titles (4 championships, 4 Cups and 2 Super Cups) in his 10 years as a player at Olympiacos, but it was as a coach of the team he loved that he would go on to become one of the all-time greats, winning 10 championships, 9 Cups, 3 Super Cups and—most importantly—the European Champions League trophy in 2018 following an epic struggle against Italy’s Pro Reco, the….Real Madrid of polo.

When he hung up his cap in 2000, Fate stepped in when the president of the amateur Olympiacos club at the time, Leonidas Theodorakakis, suggested he stay on as Dragan Matutinović’s assistant. He did, and the team reached the Champions League final, which they lost to VK Jug in Dubrovnik. They didn’t lose in 2002, however, when they came up against Honvéd in Budapest in the Champions League, when Thodoris Vlachos was assisting the excellent Hungarian coach Zoltán Kásás. Later, he would also work with the Croatian coach, Veselin Djuho. He learned important things from all of them, and in his years as an assistant coach, Olympiacos won 1 Champions League, 1 European Super Cup, 5 Greek Championships and 5 Greek Cups.

And so, having learned his trade with the creme de la creme, when the time came to build the team from scratch in 2011, during a transitional (and difficult) era for the amateur club, he set about the task with know-how and loyalty. Since his new team won its first title in 2013, he’s never stopped, with a victory in the Champions League in Genoa in 2018 (in Pro Reco’s home pool, no less), as well as 10 championships, 9 Cups, and 3 Super Cups. Of course, he also set a tremendous record: 163 consecutive wins in the Greek League before Olympiacos finally lost—in a final, to Vouliagmeni.

The president of Olympiacos amateur at that time, Dimitris Diathesopoulos, added the cherry on top by making him head coach of the Greek team in parallel. The move made a lot of sense, since the national team was based on Olympiacos. The international distinctions weren’t long in coming, culminating in the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics (2021) and three medals in World Championships (1 silver and 2 bronze).

In essence, the national team stuck faithfully to the systems he had already used successfully at Olympiacos. Since Tokyo, he’s only coached the national team,

where he brought an end to the infighting and internal disputes, which had peaked just before he took over.

Thodoris Vlachos led the Piraeus Club to the LEN Champions League trophy in Genoa in 2018. Charis Pavlidis created an explosive mix of experienced and young players on the women’s side. And so it went…

A mentor to women’s water polo

“Only in my dreams could I have imagined such an outcome when we started in September, especially with all the difficulties we’ve faced.”

The words are Charis Pavlidis’, and they were spoken shortly after Olympiacos’ victory over Dunaújváros in Hungary in the Euroleague final. In their most epic season, the Reds reach the pinnacle of Europe by defeating two Hungarian teams in Budapest, then winning the double in Greece and the European Super Cup!

And while Charis Pavlidis may have been barely able to imagine a result like that in his dreams, he is definitely the man who made Olympiacos dreams come true in women’s water polo and earned the Club a place among the top European teams of all time.

Brought up with the Reds from an early age, despite being from Thessaloniki, the coach received the best training he could have had as a player under one of the finest coaches we have had the good fortune to welcome to Greece: the Serbian “General”, Nikola Stamenic. Charis Pavlidis, who was considered one of his creations, learned a lot at his side (in 1998-2000) which would change him for the better forever.

Having been teammates with a generation of excellent players at Olympiacos—including Kyriakos Giannopoulos, Thodoris Vlachos, Makis Voltyrakis, Nikos Venetopoulos, Dimitris Kravaritis, Theodoros Hadjitheodorou and Kostas Loudis—, he brought the Reds back to the top and kept them there, establishing a dynasty.

And while, as a player, he had missed out on a European title with Olympiacos, despite playing in two European finals, he would get a second bite at the apple when he became their coach, especially after he essentially rebuilt the Olympiacos women’s team from scratch. He arrived back home from Glyfada, bringing a batch of fine players with him, including Alkistis Avramidou, Filio Manolioudaki and Glyfada’s former goalkeeper, Aleka Kalogera, who immediately became his right-hand woman, which she remains to this day.

Enjoying a direct link with the club’s academies, Theocharis (Charis) Pavlidis has always managed to field an explosive mix of experienced and young players which lifts the team’s performance into the stratosphere. During his tenure between 2007 and January 2022, when he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse by the Chinese national team, Olympiacos won everything there was to be won: 2 Euroleagues, 1 LEN Trophy and 2 LEN Super Cups, 10 championships (8 of them consecutive), 3 Greek Cups, and 1 Greek Super Cup. Which is to say he was actively involved in 19 of the 30 titles won by the women’s team!

When he left, he not only nominated his replacement (though the Greek coach didn’t stay and was followed by Aleksandar Ćirić), he also stayed to teach him the ropes, and Olympiacos went on to win back-to-back titles, as though on auto-pilot. The Serbian coach has now presided over four consecutive doubles in Greece and Euroleague and Super Cup wins in Europe.

Pavlidis himself considers that great 2021 team to have been the most well-rounded he ever coached, and it won everything in what was the most difficult year ever in the history of water polo (and not only…), with the coronavirus, long breaks in the championship, a ban on double training sessions, minimal preparation, and several new players under 18 who were thrown in at the deep end… and came through swimmingly.

Pavlidis “threw” in Siouti, Tornarou, Chaldaiou, Tricha, and Myriokefalitaki alongside the likes of Avramidou and Tsoukala, or Eleftheria Plevritou and Diamantopoulou, and the results were… a delight. His players not only looked forward to the training sessions, they even arrived at the pool almost an hour early!

If he could, he would love them to be able to play the 2019 Euroleague Final again! Olympiacos were leading 11-8 in the home pool of the mighty Sabadell, having played a perfect game with just five minutes left on the clock, when the referees (and some mistakes by the Greek team) turned the game upside down, resulting in an upset and the title going to the Spanish team, 13-11.

Or the 2017 final in Kirishi against the host Kinef, when the lights went out during Olympiacos’ crucial counter-attack for the equalizer!

In 2000 he retired when the then president of Olympiacos’ amateur division, Leonidas Theodorakakis, suggested that he stay with the team in another post, as the assistant to Dragan Matutinovic. A second great career had just begun.

He raised the bar so high, the others couldn’t reach it

Crucially, during the Pavlidis-Kountouris years (Charis Pavlidis as coach, Michalis Kountouris as president of water polo), and especially after 2010, the mentality of all the players who were in the team and all those who joined it began to change for the better. They set the bar very high from the start, in training.

While he was still coaching Olympiacos, he had also achieved incredible things with the Canadian national team, leading them to the top four of the World Championship. However, their collaboration ended due to incompatible philosophies.

And, of course, his famous defense was copied by all the teams: it’s a defense that collectively prevents the center forward from getting the ball, freeing up the player who would normally mark the center forward, who can drop back a little and play like a second goalkeeper.”

He now coaches the Greek national team.