Stelios Giannakopoulos in action for Bolton against Manchester United.

How one Bolton Wanderers legend helped Sam Allardyce mix it with the Premier League’s big boys

June 30, 2024 Sports 61 Views

Bolton Wanderers supporters still get a warm glow when they remember Greek midfielder Stelios Giannakopoulos.

With a keen eye for goal and the ability to seek out his team-mates with pinpoint accuracy, Giannakopoulos featured heavily for Bolton during their longstanding tenure in England’s top flight back in the early to mid-2000s.

To be honest, I didn’t like English football as a kid. It was very different back then. There weren’t too many teams trying to play out from the back when I was a young footballer – the English game was all about getting the ball forward as quickly as possible. But you grow up and realise the level, and I realised that this is a league you need to come to, to prove things to yourself and others. Nikos Dabizas, who was playing for Newcastle at the time, put in a word so that I could be convinced about the quality of the Premier League. By this time [aged nearly 29], it was probably the next step for me and my career.

Yes, it was a brilliant period for me, for the fans, for the club, for the town – for everyone. It was unreal. We qualified twice for Europe and we were probably one of the Premier League’s hardest teams to play against. Playing for Big Sam [Allardyce] was strange at the beginning, but it became much easier as we got to know each other and I began to see what he wanted and demanded from the players. Everything was set up very well. I think that if you’d asked the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United which team they least liked playing, it would have been us. We were very well prepared. We had some great backroom staff and our scouting network was fantastic. We used Prozone, so we knew everything about the opposition. Add the individual talent and the attitude of those players, and you get an appreciation of why we got the results that we did.

I have plenty of happy memories, because we played against big clubs and managed to spoil the party! We beat Arsenal a couple of times, including in the FA Cup when I scored a diving header. I don’t have good memories from the 2004 League Cup Final against Middlesbrough, but we still got there. Then Europe! Where do you start? Qualifying two years in a row was remarkable. To not only play against Atletico Madrid, Bayern Munich and Marseille but get results against these teams is crazy, really. We brought memories to the Reebok that I don’t think will ever come again. One of the best feelings for any footballer is being recognised, walking about – you realise just what an impact the team had on the town. Of course, these days the kids don’t recognise me, but their parents do.

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