Panathinaikos signs new coach
Panathinaikos soccer club, which parted ways with Spanish coach Victor Munoz at the end of last season after the Athens club ended third in the Super League and missed out on a Champions League berth, yesterday signed a two-year deal with Portuguese coach Jose Peseiro, the Athens team announced. «I’m very glad about the prospect of coaching a major club. Panathinaikos is a renowned team, not just in Greece, but Europe as well,» Peseiro, a UEFA Cup runner-up with Sporting Lisbon three seasons ago, told reporters. «I’ve come to Panathinaikos to win titles.» The Portuguese coach, aged 47, served as an assistant coach to Carlos Queiroz at Real Madrid in the 2003-04 season, but lasted just a year as a result of Queiroz’s sacking. The following season, Peseiro returned to Portugal to coach Sporting Lisbon, which he took within striking distance of the league title and led to the UEFA Cup final. The Portuguese team was defeated by CSKA Moscow in the final. Peseiro resigned from Sporting late in 2005. Before joining Real Madrid, Peseiro spent an impressive four seasons with CD Nacional, which he led from Portugal’s third division to the top-tier league between the 1999-00 and 2002-03 seasons. He joins Panathinaikos having worked with Saudi club Al-Hilal the previous season. Peseiro is the latest in a long-running series of coaching changes at Panathinaikos, a pattern that is common at most local clubs. The Athens team, one of the country’s two most popular, has won just one league title over the past decade, in the 2004-05 season. It was a league-and-cup double triumph for Panathinaikos that season but the club sacked its Israeli coach Itzhak Shum shortly afterward. Peseiro flew back to Portugal yesterday and is due in Athens early next month to start work with his new club Panathinaikos.
