Talent. Such a common yet complex concept. What is talent?” One definition goes like this: a natural gift, special ability or skill that a person displays in a given field, often from a very young age.
But talent isn’t enough.
“It’s not enough to have a talent for something. It doesn’t mean you’ve earned something, just that you have something to give back.”
Pioneering Swiss Carl Jung had explained at the turn of the 20th century how a naturally gifted person had to exploit their gift. Most importantly, he showed the way to the “teachers”, the trainers. Olympiacos has followed that path faithfully, devoutly one might say, for 30 years now. And the results are clear to see: they’re playing on the field.
Because the results of this emphasis on finding and nurturing talent have names: Kostas Fortounis, Panagiotis Retsos, Babbis Kostoulas, Christos Mouzakitis, Antonis Papakanellos, Fanis Bakoulas, Isidoros Koutsidis, Stavros Pnevmonidis, Argyris Liatsikouras and others.
All of the above players, and many others, are now European champions on the senior side or (and) the U19 team.
Yet out of all the talented youngsters to emerge from the academies, there is one player who links the present with the past and highlights the Club’s emphasis on providing space and time for a football superstar to emerge: Konstantinos Tzolakis.
He’s not just the starting goalkeeper for the senior side at the moment, and he’s not merely a prodigy who has come out of Olympiacos’ youth academies–he’s one of the best players in the world in goal. Tzolakis’ face reflects everything that Olympiacos dreams of for its youngsters. He represents a timeless Club vision, one that is now a reality and more important than any title.
Tzolakis’ course through Olympiacos’ youth academies is living proof that the organization produces champions.
September 29, 1996. The talent that goes by the name of Dimitris Eleftheropoulos is introduced to the world of Olympiacos. It’s the third match of the new season and the team has traveled to Thessaloniki for a match against Iraklis.
Manager Dusan Bejevic doesn’t have keeper Alekos Rantos available, and is apparently dissatisfied with the performance of the other keeper, Fotis Strakosha. But there’s a solution at hand, and it comes from within the Club’s own ranks.
Eleftheropoulos, just 20 years old and a member of the senior team since he was 17-and-a-half, makes his debut.
Born in 1976 and a native of Piraeus, he went to school in the port city’s Hatzikyriakio district. When he was still in elementary school, his father enrolled him in the club what would become his destiny: Olympiacos.
“Ele”, as per his nickname, a Bonafide football star, was the first major talent the Club had produced from its ranks in years. Extremely talented, tall and handsome, he was impressive in every way, and a football phenomenon who emerged from the core of Greece’s football Legend. Unfortunately, he would also play a leading role in the most bitter moment in the Club’s history in Europe.
March 17, 1998. Olympiacos leads 1-0 against Juventus in a game the Greek club has dominated all evening. If they can hold on to that lead, Olympiacos will make it to the lofty Champions League semi-finals.
Yet, as fate would have it, in the 85th minute, Juventus fullback Alessandro Birindelli crosses the ball in from the right and a gust of wind blown straight from Hell alters its course midair, allowing Antonio Conte to score and tie the game at 1-1.
Olympiacos is eliminated in the Champions League quarter-final, and “Ele” is left with a black cloud hanging over him. For Olympiacos, that night marks the beginning of the nightmare known as the “European curse”.
March 14, 2024. Olympiacos has lost 1-4 to Maccabi Tel Aviv at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium. The result means elimination from the Europa Conference League competition.
That’s when manager José Luis Mendilibar decides to make a change between the posts, putting Konstantinos Tzolakis in to replace Alexandros Paschalakis.
Some two weeks later and the “European curse” is broken into 1,000 pieces. Olympiacos trounces the Israeli team 6-1 in its home field, posting one of the biggest upsets in the history of European competitions.
Next up are Fenerbahce, followed by Aston Villa, who are eliminated by Olympiacos with three wins and one loss – in regulation time — in Istanbul, which would be overturned in a penalty shootout for the qualification.
A win in the final against Fiorentina results in Olympiacos being the first Greek football team to win a European title in Club play. The Europa Conference League title has Tzolakis’ fingerprints all over it.
For starters, he blocks three shots in Istanbul against Fenerbahce during the penalty shootout – a personal statement of excellence, class, resilience which earns him a full-time spot in the Olympiacos goal.
Tzolakis’ course is very similar to the one followed years earlier by Eleftheropoulos. He began playing football and taking part in track and field events at the same time. He’s a native of Chania, on Crete, from a family of Olympiacos supporters with a gym coach and athletics trainer for a mother and a physiotherapist for a father.
A young Tzolakis has two career goals, a university education and sports. He trained in the high jump and also took part in the national championship for young athletes as a member of the “Eleftherios Venizelos” Sports Club in his hometown. At the same time, at the age of 12, he begins playing football for the Platanias team in Chania. In 2018, at the age of 15, Olympiacos recruits him to its youth academies. At the time, Tzolakis would declare, somewhat audaciously, “I used to watch Olympiacos on television, and I’d say, ‘I have to get myself to the Karaiskakis Stadium to watch them one time, even if it’s from the stands. Everything happened very quickly after that”.
The greatest moment of glory until… the next one: Konstantis Tzolakis celebrates with Panagiotis Retsos the victory of the Conference League
At the age of 17 years, three months and 26 days, Tzolakis makes his debut in the Olympiacos jersey. The date is March 4, 2020. The place: Thessaloniki, just like Eleftheropoulos years earlier. He debuts in a Cup match against PAOK Thessaloniki at the Toumba Stadium, becoming the youngest goalkeeper to start with the senior team in Club history. José Sá’s injury puts him in the starting line-up for the Cup final against AEK Athens on September 12, 2020. His performance is amazing.
The Piraeus side beats AEK 1-0 and the Cup is theirs. His course is set. Olympiacos had found the country’s next great goalkeeper. However, to bring this talent to the surface took patience, perseverance and a plan for young players – for Olympiacos’ youth.
Tzolakis is the absolute poster boy of the Olympiacos academy. A product of the club, who went through all the stages, with many ups and downs. In the end, his Club gave him what he deserved: his big break. A genuine opportunity that promised much and reflected the Club’s confidence and faith in his talent, personality and education. Because Olympiacos is a club that wants to showcase and develop its talented youngsters, which it has turned into an end in itself—a vision that emanates from a mandate, an order and funding from the man at the helm. Because everything that’s been achieved in recent years is a project inspired, demanded and paid for by Evangelos Marinakis.
Olympiacos decided back in 2010 that the academies are its future. Evangelos Marinakis has made it an absolute priority to have players from the Club’s ranks make it to the senior team.
In the Marinakis era, the training center at Rentis has almost tripled in size to around 100,000 square meters. And from the three football fields in place in 2010, there are now eight to cover the needs of the senior team and the academies. The building of new infrastructure and pitches, along with other improvements made over the years at Rentis, has cost more than 20 million euros. This very large investment which Evangelos Marinakis has made since 2010 over and above the regular football department budget. Obviously, money does not guarantee success, nor does it guarantee the promotion of players, but nothing in life comes free–not even in football. And in the post-2010 Marinakis era, almost 55 million euros have been invested in Olympiacos’ youth academies.
From the same class as Retsos
Nevertheless, in football, no amount of money, however great, can guarantee success, especially at the infrastructural level.
Money isn’t enough to discover, evaluate and train talent and then send it into the spotlight in the senior team. And Evangelos Marinakis has learned that lesson, and not for free.
He began with the class that included Panagiotis Retsos, Androutsos, Nikolaos and those other youngsters who were permanent champions in the youth teams.
The emergence of Tzolakis is emblematic of this generation. The emergence of the youngsters who conquered Europe and continue to do so at the youth level. Because that’s what Olympiacos wants. Just as Tzolakis, Retsos and Fortounis became the most red-and-white-to-the-bone players in the team that won the Club its first European trophy, so the next generation should continue along the same path. Young players grafted with the Olympiacos DNA. With wings on their feet and heart in their chests. To win new fairy-tale triumphs for their Club.
