23 Facts About Stelios Giannakopoulos

Stylianos Giannakopoulos, known mononymously as Stelios due to his long surname, is a Greek football manager and former player.

Stelios Giannakopoulos joined Ethnikos Asteras when he was seven years old, later moved for one year to Doxa Vyronas, and finally made his first-team debut for Ethnikos Asteras in the autumn of 1991, in a season which ended with the club gaining promotion to the professional Third Division.

Stelios Giannakopoulos spent a total of seven successful seasons there as a regular player, making a total of 189 appearances and scoring 63 goals in all competitions.

Stelios Giannakopoulos's main attribute remains his ability to make late runs into the penalty area and his flair to shoot accurately from range.

Stelios Giannakopoulos made his Bolton debut against Manchester United and helped Bolton reach the 2004 Football League Cup Final and their highest ever Premier League finish in his first season.

However Stelios Giannakopoulos stayed at Bolton and although he was not as regular a player as previous seasons he was able to help Bolton with a string of late goals.

Stelios Giannakopoulos is another player who arrived at Hull City with an impressive track record, having spent 5 years in the Premier League with Bolton and winning Euro 2004 with Greece.

Stelios Giannakopoulos joined the Tigers in 2008, for the club's first ever season in the top flight under Phil Brown.

Stelios Giannakopoulos made his debut for Hull against Portsmouth exactly 2 months after joining them on 22 November 2008, coming on as a sub in the 82nd minute.

Stelios Giannakopoulos would make one more substitute appearance in the league as well as a full game in the FA cup before he decided to make a further move having been frustrated by his lack of games at Hull.

On 22 January 2009, six years after his first move to the UK, Stelios Giannakopoulos returned to Greece by signing for Greek side AEL on a one-and-a-half-year deal.

Stelios Giannakopoulos' impact was instant as the Greek press labeled him the 'most important transfer of the winter period' as he scored three crucial goals in his first four games to propel Larissa to a top 5 position in the Greek Super League.

Larissa were able to maintain this position until the end of the season which qualified them for European competition, something which Stelios Giannakopoulos admitted was a great achievement and totally unexpected for a smaller team like Larissa and compared it to his time with Bolton.

Stelios Giannakopoulos parted company amicably with Larissa on 12 December 2009, six months before his contract would have officially ended.

Stelios Giannakopoulos made his international debut on 12 March 1997 in a friendly game against Cyprus.

Stelios Giannakopoulos fell out of favour slightly in 2000 and 2001 featuring in only three games in two years however cemented his place in the team from 2002 onwards, featuring in every single game of the EURO 2004 qualifiers.

Stelios Giannakopoulos was one of the key players in the victorious team at the 2004 European Football Championship playing in four out of six games including the final.

Stelios Giannakopoulos was amongst the squad that unsuccessfully defended their title at the Euro 2008 competition.

Stelios Giannakopoulos had scored a total of 12 goals for the national team; an interesting statistic being that Greece had won all but one of the games in which Stelios Giannakopoulos had scored in.

On 25 May 2010, Stelios Giannakopoulos was voted as president of the Greek Professional Footballers Association, taking over from his former teammate Antonios Nikopolidis.

Stelios Giannakopoulos started his managerial career on 13 August 2012 after taking charge of his old team Paniliakos FC in Football League 2.

Stelios Giannakopoulos has been a vocal critic of how football is run in Greece, in March 2015 he said in an interview with BBC Sport that he feared continued violence at games threatened the future of the sport in his country.

Stelios Giannakopoulos' second born son, Dimitris, is a footballer and as of 2022 plays for the Bolton Wanderers Academy.