Panathinaikos
The club
Panathinaikos Athlitikos Omilos, the Pan-Athenian Athletic Club, were founded on 3 February 1908 in Athens. The colours are green and white. The traditional home is the Leoforos Alexandras Stadium, used since 1923, and the club has moved between Leoforos and the Athens Olympic Stadium, capacity 69,618, more than once as renovation and money dictated. The record attendance is 74,493, for a match against AEK Athens in 1986. Mimis Domazos holds the appearance record with 502 matches between 1959 and 1980, and Krzysztof Warzycha is the leading scorer with 319 goals between 1989 and 2004. The owner and chairman is Giannis Alafouzos.
The head coach is the Dane Jacob Neestrup, appointed on 26 May 2026 in place of Rafael Benitez.
A word on which club this is. Panathinaikos are the green-and-white club of Athens itself, and they are none of the other Athens sides. They are not AEK Athens, the club of the Asia Minor refugee community who won the 2025/26 Greek championship and who already have their own file in this corpus. They are not Olympiacos, who are from Piraeus. They are not Panionios, Apollon Smyrnis, Athinaikos or Atromitos, all of whom are also Athenian. They are not OFI, who are from Crete and who also have their own file here. The name is also carried by the wider Panathinaikos athletic club, including its well-known basketball side; this dossier is about the football club.
Recent seasons
Panathinaikos finished fourth in the Super League in 2021/22. In 2022/23 they topped the regular season but did not take the title, which is decided by the championship play-offs. They were second in 2023/24 and second again in 2024/25. In 2025/26 they were fourth in the regular season with 49 points from 14 wins, 7 draws and 5 defeats, 44 goals scored and 26 conceded, and fourth again after the play-offs, finishing on 52 points from 32 matches, 14 wins, 10 draws and 8 defeats, 47 goals scored and 33 conceded. That fourth place put them into the second qualifying round of the Conference League. It was a season of three managers: Rui Vitoria until 15 September 2025, two caretaker spells, and Rafael Benitez from 24 October. Karol Swiderski and Anastasios Bakasetas were the joint top league scorers with five each.
Honours and landmarks
Twenty Greek championships, twenty Greek Cups and three Greek Super Cups, with eight domestic doubles. The championship years given by the sources read here run from 1930 through 1949, 1953, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 2004 and 2010; the source states a total of twenty titles while listing nineteen years, so the full list was not established from the sources read here. The 1963/64 championship was won unbeaten, one of only two such seasons by a Greek club. Abroad, Panathinaikos won the Balkans Cup in 1977.
The landmark is European. Panathinaikos reached the 1971 European Cup final and remain the only Greek club to have reached the final of the European Cup or Champions League.
Notable scorelines
The 1971 European Cup final was lost 2-0 to Ajax at Wembley Stadium on 2 June 1971, in front of 83,179, refereed by Jack Taylor of England. Dick van Dijk scored after five minutes and Arie Haan in the 87th. Rinus Michels managed Ajax and Ferenc Puskas managed Panathinaikos.
The run to it produced the other landmark scorelines. Jeunesse Esch of Luxembourg were beaten 7-1 on aggregate in the first round, 2-1 away and 5-0 at home. Slovan Bratislava went out 4-2 on aggregate, 3-0 at home and 1-2 away. Everton were held 1-1 in England and 0-0 in Athens, and Panathinaikos went through on away goals. In the semi-final Red Star Belgrade won the first leg 4-1 in Yugoslavia; Panathinaikos won the return 3-0, and went through 4-4 on away goals.
More recently, the 2025/26 Europa League round of sixteen produced a 1-0 home win over Real Betis followed by a 4-0 defeat in Spain. The club's all-time record win and record defeat were not established from the sources read here.
European record
Beyond the 1971 final, Panathinaikos reached the European Cup semi-finals in 1985 and the Champions League semi-finals in 1995/96, and the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 1992 and 2002 and of the UEFA Cup in 1988 and 2003. The club also appeared in the 1971 Intercontinental Cup; the outcome of that tie was not established from the sources read here.
The 2025/26 campaign began in the Champions League second qualifying round against Rangers, drawn 1-1 at home and lost 2-0 away, out 3-1 on aggregate. Dropping into the Europa League, Panathinaikos came through qualifying into the league phase, where they took 5 wins, 8 draws and 3 defeats across the season's competition record, went through the knockout play-offs, and lost the round of sixteen to Real Betis, 1-4 on aggregate. Their exact league-phase finishing position in the 36-team table was not established from the sources read here.
Quotes
No directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
Jacob Neestrup is the head coach. The summer brought in Inaki Pena from Barcelona for a reported three million euros, Stefan de Vrij from Inter Milan on a free transfer, Elmin Rastoder from Thun, Rick van Drongelen from Samsunspor, Kings Kangwa from Hapoel Be'er Sheva, Etienne Camara from Charleroi and Anass Zaroury from Lens. Renato Sanches returned to Paris Saint-Germain at the end of his loan, Karol Swiderski was sold to Widzew Lodz and Tin Jedvaj left for Al Shabab on a free.
Panathinaikos entered the Conference League at the second qualifying round. They beat Paksi 4-3 on aggregate, winning 2-1 in Hungary on 23 July 2026 and drawing 2-2 at home on 30 July. In the third qualifying round they drew 1-1 at home with CSKA 1948 Sofia on 5 August and won the return 2-1 after extra time on 11 August, through 3-2 on aggregate.
The play-off round is against Hradec Kralove of the Czech Republic. The first leg at the Athens Olympic Stadium on 20 August 2026 finished 2-2 in front of 14,647, refereed by Jerome Brisard of France. Andrews Tetteh scored twice, on 55 and 61 minutes, and Panathinaikos then conceded twice to Abdullahi Umar, on 89 minutes and in the sixth minute of stoppage time. The second leg is played today, 27 August 2026, at the Malsovicka arena in Hradec Kralove. It is level at 2-2 and the tie is unresolved as this is written.
Domestically the season has not started for them: their opening Super League fixture against Kifisia was postponed because of the Conference League. The 2026/27 Greek league table was not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panathinaikos_F.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panathinaikos_F.C.?action=raw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_European_Cup_final https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Super_League_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Panathinaikos_F.C._season?action=raw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Panathinaikos_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Panathinaikos_F.C._season?action=raw
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.