PAOK FC

For the Basketball Team, see PAOK BC. For the Volleyball Team, see P.A.O.K. V.C. For the Handball Team, see P.A.O.K. H.C. For the Women's Football Team, see PAOK FC (women). For the major multi-sport club, see P.A.O.K.

PAOK
Full nameΠανθεσσαλονίκειος Αθλητικός Όμιλος Κωνσταντινουπολιτών
Panthessaloníkios Athlitikós Ómilos Konstadinoupolitón
(Panthessalonian Athletic Club of Constantinopolitans)
Nickname(s)
  • Δικέφαλος του Βορρά
    Dikefalos tou Vorra (Double-headed eagle of the North)
  • Ασπρόμαυροι
    Asprómavri (White-Blacks)
Short namePAOK
Founded20 April 1926; 98 years ago (1926-04-20)
GroundToumba Stadium[1]
Capacity28,704 (all-seater)
OwnerDimera Group Limited Ltd[2]
PresidentIvan Savvidis
Head coachRăzvan Lucescu
LeagueSuper League Greece
2023–24Super League Greece, 1st of 14 (champions)
Websitehttp://www.paokfc.gr/
Current season
Active departments of P.A.O.K.
Football
(Men's)		 Football B
(Men's)		 Football
(Women's)
Basketball
(Men's)		 Basketball
(Women's)		 Volleyball
(Men's)
Volleyball
(Women's)		 Handball
(Men's)		 Handball
(Women's)
Water Polo
(Men's)		 Water Polo
(Women's)		 Boxing
Taekwondo Cycling Athletics
Ice hockey Futsal (Men's) Wrestling
Weightlifting Swimming Judo
Esports Chess

PAOK FC (Greek: ΠΑΕ ΠΑΟΚ, ['pa.ok]),[3] short for "Pan-Thessalonian Athletic Club of Constantinopolitans" (Greek: Πανθεσσαλονίκειος Αθλητικός Όμιλος Κωνσταντινουπολιτών, romanized: Panthessaloníkios Athlitikós Ómilos Konstadinoupolitón), and commonly known as PAOK Thessaloniki, PAOK Salonika or simply PAOK, is a Greek professional football club based in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece. PAOK are one of the top domestic clubs, the most widely supported in Northern Greece and the current Greek Super League champions.

Established on 20 April 1926 by Greek refugees who fled to Thessaloniki from Constantinople in the wake of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), they play their home games at Toumba Stadium, a 29,000 seating capacity football ground. Their name, along with the club's emblem, the Byzantine-style double-headed eagle with retracted wings, honours the memory of the people and places (mostly from the city of Constantinople) that once belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire.[4][5] PAOK currently plays in the top-flight Super League, which they have won four times (in 1976, 1985, 2019 and 2024). They are eight-time winners of the Greek Cup (in 1972, 1974, 2001, 2003, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021). The club is one of the three which have never been relegated from the top national division and the only team in Greece that have won the Double (in 2019) going unbeaten (26–4–0 record) in a national round-robin league tournament (league format since 1959).[6]

The team has appeared several times in the UEFA Europa League, but has yet to reach the group stage of the UEFA Champions League. PAOK have reached the quarter-finals of a European competition three times; once in the 1973–74 European Cup Winners' Cup and twice in the UEFA Conference League, in the 2021–22 and 2023–24 seasons. PAOK is the only Greek team that has more wins than losses in their European record (90 wins, 65 draws and 79 defeats, as of April 2024) and the 0–7 away UEFA Cup win over Locomotive Tbilisi on 16 September 1999 is the largest ever achieved by a Greek football club in all European competitions.

  1. ^ "Home Ground". paokfc.gr.
  2. ^ "The President". paokfc.gr.
  3. ^ Vassiliki Papantonopoulou (31 October 2014). "Myths, heroes and legends: PAOK in focus". uefa.com. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  4. ^ "History". paokfc.gr. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  5. ^ Georgios Moralis. "PAOK FC". footballhistory.org. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  6. ^ Athan Stylos (30 May 2019). "A look at PAOK's 2018/19 squad". agonasport.com. Archived from the original on 22 October 2019. Retrieved 22 October 2019.