CHAMPIONS LEAGUE | COACHES
Pedro Martins
(Olympiakos)I
n his role as owner of Greek powerhouse
Olympiakos and two-time champions of
Europe Nottingham Forest, the inimitable
Evangelos Marinakis has never been one to
allow a first-team coach to outstay his welcome,
hiring and firing with abandon. So how unusual
it was to see Marinakis to stand resolutely by
his man this summer, insisting that former
Portuguese international midfielder Martins was
the ideal figure to take the club forward.
Marinakis easily could have pulled the trigger.
For a club used to dominating the Greek scene,
two seasons without a trophy is a destabilising
eternity and in terms of concrete end -product,
Martins – headhunted in April 2018 – had failed
to deliver, his side “only” securing second place
last term, behind PAOK.
Here was a rare instance of Marinakis looking
at the big picture, taking stock, listening to fans
and noting the many positive changes that
Martins had instituted: the entertaining free-flowing football, the vastly improved tactical
awareness and organisation of the side, the
fighting spirit and squad togetherness. In the
second half of the campaign, Olympiakos lost
just once in the league – a 3-1 defeat at PAOK- and were generally quite unstoppable, winning
all of their last 10 games.
Continuity suddenly looked a good option for
Marinakis and he has been proved absolutely
right, with Martins’ reinvigorated troop cruising to
a Champions League berth thanks to victories
over Viktoria Plzen, Istanbul BB and Krasnodar.
And all achieved without talismanic attacking
midfielder and skipper Kostas Fortounis, who
suffered a cruciate ligament injury during a pre-
season friendly against Hamburg in Austria.
“It was very important for both Olympiakos
and Greece that we’ve progressed to the
Champions League group phase,” declared
Martins. “We’ll now have the chance to properly
assess the potential of
our team.
“Right now, it’s
fantastic to watch the
quality of our football
and the way we
execute a game plan.We aim to continue moving in this direction.”
Martins, an engine-room enforcer in his
playing days for Feirense, Sporting, Guimaraes,
Santa Clara and Alverca, has a reputation in
Portugal of being something of a miracle-worker
coach, someone capable of sprinkling magic
dust on average to middling sides. The proof of
the pudding? The unexpected success he
enjoyed when qualifying Maritimo, Rio Ave and
Guimaraes for the Europa League.
Now for his next big continental challenge,
with Olympiakos back in the Champions League
and eager not to sell themselves short.“It was very important for both Olympiakos
and Greece that we’ve progressed to the
Champions League group phase”