Melissanidis at the opening of the AEK History Museum: “It is our destiny, our life and our history” – 2024-04-21 15:43:53

Its History Museum AEK at the stadium of New Philadelphia, the OPAP Arena, opened its… doors and impresses! The “yellow and black” inaugurated it with all the splendor with Dimitris Melissanidis speaking of a source of inspiration, education and pride. “AEK is our life”, said the administrative leader of the Union and added that with this Museum “we are walking in History”.

D. Melissanidis stated in detail: “Ladies and gentlemen, dear representatives of the mass media, dear visitors, I welcome you with great joy to the opening of the history museum of AEK, in a great moment for all of us, which coincides with the completion 100 years of glorious journey of our club.

From today we start a journey through time. We discover and remember the milestones of our history and the triumphs that defined the glorious course of our team, thus fulfilling another historical debt.

During these 100 years, faith and struggle are our values. Everyone loves their teams but we can’t live without ours. AEK is our destiny, our life and our history.

It would be unfair not to mention that the light of the candle lit by the refugees will burn forever in all three of these great projects: both in our stadium and in the museum of refugee Hellenism and in this museum which is the house where we keep the living, for us, legends of AEK.

Every exhibit of the museum, every historical relic, every form of AEK that you will see, is a special life experience and goes deep into the heart and soul of our club.

Because it reflects the identity, ideas and principles that guided AEK for a century and kept it standing in difficult times. Today we are not only celebrating our past, we are also embracing our future, as through our museum our precious heritage will be preserved and highlighted and new generations of AEKtzis will be born.

After all, we look forward to and hope that the AEK museum will be a source of inspiration, education and pride for our young people.

At this point I would like to make a special mention to warmly thank Gerasimos Gasparinatos for his important contribution to the creation of our museum.

Without this custodian of the historical memory of AEK we may not be able to complete this project as it deserves in our history.

Gerasimos will continue to be here and support the effort. From today he will be the man who will have the general direction of our museum.

Also a big thank you to Ilias Papageorgiou’s team for all this effort all these years. As an administration we did everything we promised: a stadium, a second pitch for our youngsters, a training center and two bright museums.

Brilliant cradles of sports and culture. All with vision, love, stubbornness but most of all housekeeping. Soon the two metal statues, of Costas Nestoridis and Mimi Papaioannou, will be placed opposite the official gate, right and left of the lake with the waterfalls.

This is how we close the whole circle of the “Agia Sophia” sports, memory and culture center. Thank you very much for responding to our invitation and we invite you to walk together through the streets of AEK’s history honoring its magnificent heritage. Thanks”.