Greece coaching job in jeopardy
Just days after he took on troubled Piraeus basketball club Olympiakos as an additional coach, Panayiotis Yiannakis appears likely to be forced from his job with the national team following federation objections. The federation has raised concern about the dual role on the grounds of conflicting ethics standards. Yiannakis, a European basketball great who has led Greece to European titles both as a player, in 1987, and as coach, in 2005, assumed his club-level job in pursuit of more regular challenges than those offered by the national team’s more sporadic agenda. Giorgos Vassilakopoulos, the chief of FIBA Europe and a member of the Greek federation’s board, has expressed concern about the possible effects of Yiannakis’s ties with the national team’s squad should he, as Olympiakos coach, be verbally abused by fans of archrival Panathinaikos, whose ranks include a considerable number of Greece internationals. The rivals meet in the Greek Cup final on March 29. Up until a year-and-a-half ago, Yiannakis held concurrent coaching posts with the national team and the less prominent Athens club Maroussi, where the prospect of controversy was not an issue of concern. Greece takes part in the Olympic qualifying tournament this July. It remains unknown whether Yiannakis will still lead Greece.
