The future of football in Greece has been quite bleak due to several political and financial crisis that had hit the country. However, Stelios Giannakopoulos believes that there could be a brighter future for football in his country. Stelios who had ended his playing career back in 2010, worked as head of the Greek PFA. During that period, he was also working on getting his coaching badges.

Stelios who talked about the issue in his home country, noted that things can pick up and get better as according to him, Greece has a long history of solving problems.

“If you are not there it is difficult to describe what has happened in my country,” he told The Bolton News. “All the bad things have affected football. It has been hard. But we Greeks are tough people too. When we are together we deliver, we always have. And tough times will pass,” he added.
So far, Stelios has taken on two managerial jobs at Paniliakos and AE Kifisias clubs which sit pretty low in the Greek lower leagues. His main aim was to try and gain experience as a coach. Now the former Bolton Wanderers player is looking to make his next move, and hopes to get a challenge just as similar as the one which had brought him to the Wanderer’s door as a player. While he was with the Wanderers, Stelios scored about 28 goals, after appearing in 177 games for the club side.
At a point in time, Stelios was almost on the brink of a move out of Bolton to either Liverpool or Manchester City. However, the board at Wanderers were not going to let that happen, thus they put a block on his exit by laying a new deal for him on the table.