Birthday celebration with 1,000 victories
PAOK celebrated its 95th birthday week. Just 24 hours before the big day, this year’s crop of players made sure to give the team a historic victory to boot. On Sunday night, with the 2-0 against Olympiacos, the club reached a particularly important, and at the same time, highly symbolic milestone by completing 1,000 victories in the Greek top flight.
The story began on October 25 1959, when the Double-headed Eagle welcomed Alexander the Great of Katerini for for their first match and recorded the first victory in the club’s history, prevailing 3-2. Since then, another 999 wins have followed, with the name of Olympiacos written in the record books for victory number 1,000 – a team which PAOK has recorded 43 victories, more than any other team in the top flight.
The opponent who PAOK have beaten more times, however, is Aris, against whom they have chalked up 45 victories, while the second place is shared by Olympiacos and Panathinaikos with 43. Next is Apollon Smyrnis with 40 and AEK with 38. which completes the first five on the list of 69 teams that the Double-headed Eagle has faced in the championship. An important point to note is that PAOK have beaten all of the teams they have faced in the championship.
The 1972-73 season was the season when PAOK scored the most victories, as they managed to win 27 of the 34 league matches, while the best series in terms of home wins was the 13 consecutive victories from March 31, 2018 to October 29, 2018.
The best home performance, however, was from November 12, 1978 to February 24, 1980 with 24 wins in a row as the home side. Away from home on the other hand, PAOK have a top series of six wins in a row, from December 2, 2017 to February 17, 2018.
The coach with the most victories on the bench is Angelos Anastasiadis with 95, while Razvan Lucsescu has the best win rate with 79.6%. The Romanian coach has already entered into the top five coaches list with the most victories in the top flight, which is made up of the following:
1. Angelos Anastasiadis 95
2. Les Shannon 68
3. Fernando Santos 53
4. Gyula Lorant 51
5. Razvan Lucsescu 47
Most of PAOK’s victories were achieved with a score of 1-0 (227) and the 2-0 success over Olympiacos was the 182nd victory with this score. The most popular scores in PAOK’s victories are the following:
1-0 227
2-0 182
2-1 181
3-0 119
3-1 88
The total number of games that PAOK have played during this period are 2,029, and the record books now show 1,000 wins, 519 draws and 510 defeats, while the goals scored are 3,112 and 1,974 conceded.
