More coaching changes made
The growing list of coaching changes in the country’s leading soccer competition this season expanded further yesterday with the termination of two contracts. Athens club Atromitos, currently seventh, and its coach Giorgos Paraschos announced their split. In Thessaloniki later yesterday, Aris’s coach Guillermo Angel Hoyos, who joined last summer, told reporters that his association with the club, currently placed ninth, had ended. Hoyos had just emerged from a lengthy meeting with the club’s administration. Yesterday’s two coaching departures in Athens and Thessaloniki brought the 16-team Super League’s tally this season to eight. The 30-round competition is still just one game into its second half. Several days ago, the league’s front-runner Olympiakos fired Norwegian coach Trond Sollied eight months ahead of the end of his two-year contract because of the Piraeus team’s latest failure in European club-level competition. Over 40 coaching changes have been made at this club alone since 1980. It is believed that Hoyos, who reportedly hesitated to discuss extending his current contract ending next summer, may have reached an agreement elsewhere. Even so, the 44-year-old Argentine told reporters yesterday that he would have liked to carry on. «I wanted to stay with the team, but this decision was made by the administration,» Hoyos told reporters. He is scheduled to hold a news conference today. In the lead up to yesterday’s developments, Hoyos failed to attend the club’s latest weekly Monday meeting with the administration, where the agenda’s topics on this occasion would have included talks on Hoyos’s contract. Paraschos’s end at Atromitos came as a surprise. He was a pivotal figure in the club’s rise to top-tier competition that led to UEFA Cup play this season. In comments to local sports media yesterday, Paraschos said that a mutual decision was reached with the administration to end his contract because problems at the club had reached an insurmountable point following last weekend’s 4-1 drubbing against OFI in Crete. Paraschos noted that there was a conflict in thinking between him and the club’s boss, Giorgos Spanos. He did not elaborate. «We decided to split because we thought differently and did not share the same philosophy. I don’t want to go into details or unveil anything bitter,» Paraschos said. «I would have liked to continue working with Atromitos, but under different circumstances. Considering the prevailing situation, especially following the defeat against OFI, the best thing for all of us was to stop working together.»
