Leonidas Andrianopoulos

Leonidas Andrianopoulos
Leonidas Andrianopoulos as a national player in 1935 (center)
Personnel
birthday	August 10, 1911
place of birth	Piraeus ,  Greece
date of death	October 25, 2011
Place of death	Piraeus ,  Greece
position	striker
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1927-1935	Olympiacos Piraeus
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1929-1935	Greece	11 (2)
1 Only league games are given.

Leonidas Andrianopoulos ( Greek Λεωνίδας Ανδριανόπουλος ; born August 10, 1911 in Piraeus ; † October 25, 2011 ibid) was a Greek football player in the position of a striker . Four of his six brothers, Yiannis , Dinos , Giorgos and Vassilis , were among the 33 founding members of the traditional Greek association Olympiacos . While his older brothers were already active for the club from the year it was founded in 1925, the youngest of the Andrianopoulos brothers did not join the club's men's team until 1927, where he was 24 until the end of his career in 1935. He also completed eleven international matches for his home country between 1929 and 1935, in which he scored two goals.

Career

The Andrianopoulos brothers in 1927: (from left) Yiannis , Dinos , Giorgos , Vassilis and Leonidas Andrianopoulos

Leonidas Andrianopoulos was born in 1911 as the seventh and thus youngest son into a wealthy and influential Greek family at the port of Piraeus . His father had already built up a successful company at that time and was very successful as a businessman. After Piraikos Podosfairikos Omilos FC and Piraikos Opadoi FC merged on March 10, 1925 to form the new club Olympiacos, Leonidas four older brothers Yiannis , Dinos , Giorgos and Vassilis were among the 33 founding members of the new football club. Leonidas, who was only 13 at the time, only joined the men's team of the newly founded club two years later. It was also the Andrianopoulos brothers who made a significant contribution to the club's reputation and early fame, with the four older brothers participating in the team's attack line from the start. Three consecutive league titles in the local Piraeus football championship were a clear sign that the club soon became famous across Greece. One of the brothers, Yiannis, had studied at an English college for a while and from there brought the game system used in the early years. In the beginning you played a "2-3-5", consisting of two defenders, three midfielders and five attacking players. After the first successes of the club, whose support at that time consisted largely of the working class, Leonidas Andrianopoulos finally joined the team and was together with his four older siblings in the five-man attack line. The other two brothers, Stelios and Aristides, who were both Leonidas' age but a little older, also played football, but were unable to share in the successes of the other brothers and ended their football careers relatively quickly.

The team played their first games in the Velodrome Neo Faliro and over time they moved to the Karaiskakis Stadium , which was built on the same site as the Velodrome. The first encounters were mainly against the crews of French and English warships, but there were also numerous domestic duels. At the first appearance in the Greek championship Leonidas was involved as a striker in 1929/30. After four games, the team finished third behind Panathinaikos Athens (1st) and Aris Thessaloniki (2nd) and thus bottom of the table. The track record of the team changed suddenly in the following season 1930/31, in which one already competed in a league with eight different teams and after 14 completed league games found themselves at the top of the table. The first championship title in the club's history was followed by a moderate 5th place in the 1931/32 season. Another season later, the team was able to turn everything around again in 1932/33 and call themselves Greek football champions for the second time. The team was able to repeat its success in the 1933/34 season and thus defend its championship title. Of the Andrianopoulos brothers, Leonidas was the one who had been active in the team the longest; so he was demonstrably from 1927 to the end of 1935 in the squad of Olympiakos.

Leonidas Andrianopoulos, who worked as a track and field athlete both before and after his football career, ended his football career at the age of 24 in 1935, after no championship was held in 1934/35. In all those years as an active player, he was also a member of the Greek national team from 1929 , for which he made his debut on June 30, 1929 in a 1-1 draw in a friendly against Bulgaria and was used alongside three of his brothers. A year later he took part in the first Balkan Cup , which was held over a period of over three years and in which Greece reached third place. In addition to games in the Balkan Cup, Leonidas was also used in other friendly international matches, including against a B selection from Italy. Furthermore, he completed an unofficial international match against Bulgaria in the Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium in front of around 10,000. On March 25, 1934 he was used in the qualifying first leg for the World Cup in the same year against Italy . There was no second leg, as Greece waived a second leg on home soil after the clear 4-0 defeat. Instead, the Italian federation paid the Greek a total of 700,000 drachmas in order to forego the second leg in Athens, which would have bothered the Italians in preparation for the World Cup because of the long journey. In 1934 he took part with the team in the 5th Balkan Cup and appeared there for the first time as team captain in the 2-1 victory over Yugoslavia . In this same position he played in all three international matches in his home country at this tournament. In this competition he got his two first and only goals for Greece. He scored the first of the two goals on December 23, 1934 in the 2-1 victory over Yugoslavia, where he scored the decisive final score in the 67th minute of the game; he scored the second goal just four days later in a 2-2 draw against Romania . With the last game, a 1-1 draw against Bulgaria, Leonidas Andrianopoulos ended his career as a national player on January 1, 1935.

After his official retirement at the age of 24, Leonidas Andrianopoulos joined his father's company and worked for the company for a long time. 84 years after his debut in the red and white Olympiakos dress, the youngest Andrianopoulos son died on October 25, 2011 in his hometown of Piraeus at the age of 100. The funeral that followed, two days later, was attended by numerous well-known personalities from the football club's environment, as well as various personalities from politics and business. Leonidas, the last of the five Andrianopoulos brothers who played for Olympiacos from the start, died.

successes

• 3 × Greek football champions: 1930/31, 1932/33 and 1933/34

Web links

• Greek internationals 1929-1938 on the official website of the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (English)
• The Andrianopoulos Dynasty on bostonolympiakos.com (English)

Footnotes & individual references

1. ^ The last goodbye , accessed March 5, 2014