Photo: gazzetta.gr
The football players of the Greek team AEK are ready to take active strike actions in a still unknown form, because they have not received money for seven and ten months now. This became clear after the players' meeting on Tuesday afternoon. They met to discuss what actions they would take in the event that the club owners continue with the same policy and do not pay their obligations to the players. The main shareholder of the club, Nikos Notias, has not met most of his obligations under the contracts with the individual players. According to the official announcement of the players, this has created real problems with the financial survival of some players and they required the agreed amount to be immediately paid to them.
Although in the case of AEK the football players have every right to fight to be paid what they have earned, a reliable source from the Greek sports circles announced for GRReporter that they could not do much. If a player decides to sue the owners of the team for not meeting their obligations under the bilateral agreement, they will be unofficially included in the black list of Greek football players and they will not be able to find a job after their contracts expire.
"This is a crisis situation and our powers are exhausted. Many showed great patience in an environment of constant uncertainty in the expectation that the General Meeting last week would bring some results. Finally, it became clear that no solution has been found. Instead, they asked us to be patient again. Unfortunately, many players in the team are beginning to have a serious problem with their livelihoods. Nevertheless, we continue to work and we will not give up just for the sake of AEK." This is the message the football club issued after it became clear that the management of the AEK football club has not given a specific answer when it would pay the players, but stated that it would allocate an unspecified amount in an unspecified time frame. Players are expected to show patience until the end of the month, but if there is no change in their bank accounts, they will probably proceed to an active strike.