Super League to expand to 18 teams
For a couple of months after the relegation of Olympiakos Volou and Kavala, the Super League was desperate to fill the two empty slots in the championship in order to have a full 16-team league, but then on October 18 it proposed the expansion to 18 teams, which the federation reportedly accepted the following day.
The conundrum over whether the Super League would incorporate the two sides that were relegated last season — Larissa and Panserraikos — or the fourth and fifth from last season’s second division — Levadiakos and Doxa Dramas — was solved by proposing the inclusion of all four teams in the ongoing championship, which has already gone through one-fifth of its rounds of games (had it been a 16-team league).
In Tuesday’s board meeting the Super League was not allowed to decide (after a long delay) which teams would replace Olympiakos Volou and Kavala, as earlier in the day the Volos side had secured an injunction against its replacement by the league of top-flight clubs.
Instead, the Super League sent a proposal to the Hellenic Football Federation for the expansion of the league as of this season to 18 teams, which the head of the federation, Sofoklis Pilavios, has reportedly said yes to. He went on to ask for an unequivocal decision by all Super League members for the federation to start the procedure required.
The Super League announced it would hold an extraordinary meeting on Friday, October 21.
The problem is that such a move would weigh heavily on the clubs’ calendar, as it would mean the extension of the season by four rounds of games, to say nothing of the backlog of matches from the first six rounds. It would also entail a new draw for the championship, something that has never happened before and is bordering on the definition of a mess.
