Everyone seems to know a different Evangelos Marinakis.
There’s the 2017 Greek Shipping Personality of the Year (a real award, by the way), the multi-billion-dollar maritime magnate with a pirate’s beard. There’s the cantankerous, tempestuous football club owner, obsessed with winning, the tormentor of referees and social media managers.
There’s the local politician who has spent millions from his own fortune to help his beloved home town of Piraeus. There’s the global philanthropist, the songwriter, the oligarch, the hard man and nice guy, the footballing superfan and media mogul. There is, somewhere beneath all of this, a 56-year-old father of four.
Whether you love Marinakis or loathe him depends on which of these myriad lenses you view him through. If you ask questions about him, you’re invariably just left with more questions. He’s lived more lives than the population of most small towns and is still not done yet.
Let’s start with the fundamentals. Marinakis owns and runs Capital Maritime and Trading Corporation, overseeing an ever-expanding fleet of 120 ships. He has also been member of the city council of Piraeus, closely linked to the local mayor and even the Greek prime minister – Marinakis was best man at his sister’s wedding.
He also owns two Greek TV channels, two of the top-selling newspapers, and three football clubs: his childhood club Olympiakos, who play Aston Villa on Thursday evening, as well as Nottingham Forest and Portuguese side Rio Ave. Silvio Berlusconi’s former club Monza are reportedly next on his shopping list.
Marinakis owns ships because that’s his core business, started by his father. He is politically involved because he likes to give back, and likes the influence. He owns football clubs because he loves football and owns newspapers and TV stations to ensure coverage of everything previously mentioned is on message. His PR team reportedly put out feelers to buy the Guardian for it to serve similar functions, to no avail.
Then there are the stories. There’s his songwriting stint, penning the lyrics to Excitement, a hit song by Natasa Theodoridou with over 5.5m views on YouTube. There’s the match accreditation that was found in a bush after the 5-0 defeat to Fulham and the broken City Ground TV screen, situated in front of his custom-built pitchside “throne”, in a defeat to Arsenal.
There are the millions donated to refugees. There’s also the one about the time then-Forest boss Steve Cooper didn’t recognise someone who kept turning up to training. Cooper asked his staff, who had no idea who the moustachioed 20-something was either. It was quite unsettling.
Eventually, seeing him in the canteen, Cooper approached him, to find out his mystery guest was Louis Ducruet, the nephew of Prince Albert II of Monaco. Marinakis had appointed him adviser on international projects, and not told the head coach. He’s busy.
And finally, there are the accusations. Marinakis is still under investigation for his alleged role in the Noor One case, Europe’s largest-ever drugs bust, where 2.1 metric tons of heroin were found to have been imported into Athens by boat. Claims against Marinakis focused on bank transfers linked to the impounded ship. He strongly denies any involvement.
In 2015, Marinakis was banned from football temporarily due to an investigation which accused him of leading an organisation involved in match-fixing, bribery, fraud, extortion and intimidating referees. Included in these allegations was the suggestion he was involved in bombing former Fifa referee Petros Konstantineas’ bakery, but this was thrown out, while Marinakis was cleared of all other charges.
“The things I am accused of couldn’t be further from my mentality and the way I operate as a person,” Marinakis said in 2017. “They are not only untrue, they are unthinkable. I do not answer publicly, by choice. Maybe it is a mistake, since others speak all the time, but it is not in my philosophy to feed the small-minded, vicious cycle of unsubstantiated yellow rumours. I prefer justice to take its course, no matter how long this will take in Greece.”
More recently, he was fined £26,000 for abusing one referee in Greece and banned from entering the field of play for abusing another. This makes Forest’s now-infamous club statement after the 2-0 defeat to Everton seem tame by comparison. However, the wider context around refereeing in Greece goes some way to explaining it.
Marinakis’s view of referees is largely a product of his environment.
Club statements accusing referees and the Greek FA of corruption are commonplace, sometimes stretching to 500, or even 1000 words. After one game against Olympiakos, Panathinaikos put out a statement revealing the match doctor’s address, claiming he was biased against the opposition as he would not confirm one of their players had suffered hearing loss.
This led Greek Super League referees to threaten a boycott last December, claiming they have become “a permanent target, a punching bag and a scapegoat in shifting responsibilities. Announcements that go unpunished, bullying, threats, verbal and physical attacks — these are just some of the issues that have made football toxic.”
Ari Bouloubassis, host of Olympiakos fan podcast Gate 7 International, explains: “Greek football is about 100 times more toxic than anything the Premier League has probably ever seen. We also have the most inept Football Association – it’s terrible, very partisan. Clubs regularly write diatribes straight-up saying the FA is corrupt, saying it’s a mafia.
“It’s the environment that Marinakis has found himself in. In Greece, there is a mistrust of not just the officials, but the FA. There’s always been accusations of corruption.
“But Marinakis respects the Premier League a lot and manages Forest differently to Olympiakos. Steve Cooper would have been fired months earlier if he was at Olympiakos, but he understands the need for stability in the Premier League and understands what the fans want.
“Marinakis wants to win, he’s a superfan. He’s been an Olympiakos fan his entire life, and he’s not just an owner at Forest, he’s not there to make money. He wants to win and bring that mentality to Forest. It’s never enough for him just to exist. He has to win.”
Marinakis is adored by the Olympiakos faithful, and understandably so. The side have won 10 of 13 Super League titles since he took over and four Greek Cups. As Bouloubassis puts it, they have “a DNA of victory” which stems from their owner.
When Marinakis first bought then-perennial second-tier side Forest, he was furious to see people celebrating draws or excusing losses. He has Champions League ambitions which show no sign of abating, even if Forest get relegated. This is what sets his managerial hair-trigger – 17 managers have come and gone in 14 years at Olympiakos.
And despite his high turnover of staff, i heard from former employees and those who have done business with Marinakis who speak very highly of him. Equally his role in welcoming Syrian refugees and organising and funding the “Stop War” friendly between Shakhtar Donetsk and Olympiakos is highly commendable.
His view of acceptable footballing conduct is shaped by the chaotic, sometimes corrupt world of Greek football, where every referee is the enemy and hooliganism continues largely unabated, despite recent regulatory crackdowns. It was only August last year when 29-year-old AEK fan Michalis Katsouris was murdered during riots between a coalition of Dinamo Zagreb and Panathinaikos hooligans and AEK fans.
When Olympiakos face Aston Villa in the Europa Conference League semi-final, it will be the furthest Marinakis’s side has ever made it in Europe. Forest visit Sheffield United on Saturday knowing only a win is good enough in their battle against relegation.
Marinakis will likely be in the stands for both, with his blood pressure as high as his expectations. With three games left in the Premier League season and a European final on the line, if there were to be a controversial refereeing decision against one of his teams, expect a reaction which makes the Everton statement look run-of-the-mill.
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