Icon of his time…

Football's "Alexander the Great" told him George Lianis. Unsuccessful rating. Great footballer but Buddha, not Buddha. Good kid, quiet, modest, surely if he wasn't a great footballer he would have been lost in the anonymous crowd. It has nothing to do with the restless, demon-minded, perfectly-led comrade-in-arms Alexander.

George Koudas was born today 23 November, 1946, was the leader of PAOK, but not the leader of the team. Not even a leader of himself. As the winds were telling him, he did not lead his own destiny.

We judge a great bald man, this good man George Kouda, an image of his time, whose presence on the pitch reminds us of such a forgotten, and so recent period of our post-war history.

By his behavior PAOK had driven out the poor Kuda, who deserved to improve the life of his family precisely because he was playful. So the PAOK's inability to handle the Kudas case was exploited in a socially provocative way, then by 1966, Olympiacos, and so the "North and South" war broke out in the country. Because of Kuda, because of the rivalry he had for 20 years, Olympiacos didn't win in Tuba.

Maybe the other side of the coin worked. The "pirate" transfer of Kouda, his football transfer from the co-capital to the capital, did not turn out to be a favorable Athens-Thessaloniki dipole. The spark was simply set to ignite the wick of social injustice that the Northern Helladians felt towards the central government.

PAOK with the unforgettable player George Pantelakis did not concede to Koudas, who had signed for Olympiacos, but did not have the right to play. After a year, during the dictatorship, the heavy-handed colonel Aslanidis, with the arrogance of the coup d'etat as another, Alexander the Great encouraged that the Gordian Knot was solved at once. The then junta dervenagas in the field of sports ate his face.

Pantelakis does not give the card to Koudas, the player himself refuses to return to PAOK, despite the threat of Aslanidis, who then suggests that the player play for two years at… Olympiakos and then become a player for… PAOK again. Jokes of caravanserais when they are in control of the government. And that's why the anti-communist monkey revolution in Greece was about how football transfers will be made.

Shabbat-born Kouda re-introduced his beloved PAOK shirt 1968. He was the team leader when he lifted two Greek cups, 1972 and 1974, and one championship, 1976. He was a great PAOK player, not his "big man".

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