Chairman of AEK Athens
With AEK struggling terribly in the wake of Psomiadis' corruption and the prospect of relegation to the fourth division looming, Nikolaidis retired at the relatively young age of 31. His next move, supported by all AEK fans, was to establish a consortium of businessmen and purchase AEK on 27 May 2004, as he had always dreamed. Becoming the club's president, Nikolaidis set a goal that he would remove all debts that AEK owed and make them a force in Europe in the space of 5 years. Himself and technical director Ilija Ivic, a former teammate, made several clever signings and fought ferociously for the league title, finishing third when many had expected a mid-table performance. In his second year as president, after signing two promising Greece Under-21 players, as well as adding former star Vasilis Lakis, Ukrainian international striker Oleg Venglinskyi and one time Inter centre back Bruno Cirillo, AEK achieved UEFA Champions League qualification. Apart from the improvement of the economic standards and the athletic performance of AEK, Nikolaidis was determined to decrease the hooligan actions in football, and called on the league to do more to reduce violence.
On 2 November 2008, Demis decided that he would quit as chairman of AEK after continuously poor results, stating that he had not achieved his goal in the 5 years plan. One of the reasons according to Nikolaidis for quitting was that the team didn't sell 30,000 season tickets; he stated "If I had managed to convince the AEK supporters to come to the stadium then I would not be leaving. In my mind we need 30,000 to become a big team". In 2008, AEK gained the most points in the championship, but lost it because of CAS. Next season a lot of changes were made, like Rivaldo and Lyberopoulos, resulting in a bad start of the team. During Nikolaidis's presidency, AEK had their first wins in Champions' League and due to the players sold in other teams (like Katsouranis, Papastathopoulos, Tozser, Kyrgiakos etc.) the club had a profit of 16,000,000 euros.
Read more about this topic: Demis Nikolaidis
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