Karaiskakis Stadium 5.16

The Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium is a football stadium in the Neo Faliro area of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece. It is the home ground of the Greek club Olympiacos F.C. and is named after Georgios Karaiskakis, the leader of the Greek War of Independence, who was mortally wounded near the area.HistoryIt was used during the 1896 Summer Olympics as the Neo Phaliron Velodrome, where Frenchman Paul Masson took the three track cycling gold medals.It was renovated during the 1960s and was completely rebuilt in 2004 into a 32,115 capacity, all seater stadium, ready for the football competition of the 2004 Summer Olympics.The stadium was totally demolished and built again from the beginning, facing a different direction. This complete reconstruction took a record time of only 14 months, finishing just in time for the Olympic Games. After the last deal ended in 1998, Olympiacos is using the stadium once again, on a 49-year lease from 2003 until 2052 and is traditionally identified as the club's true home. In 2002, the president and owner of Olympiacos Socratis Kokkalis, when announced the project to rebuild Karaiskakis, expressed his wish for the new stadium to be also used by Ethnikos F.C., if they wanted, as Karaiskakis is the historic home of both Olympiacos and Ethnikos. Therefore, in the contract signed by the Hellenic Olympic Committee, the owner of the stadium, and Olympiacos, a clause was included, stating that should Ethnikos wish to return to the stadium, they may do so without sharing any significant maintenance or other stadium-related costs, as those are covered by Olympiacos. As of the 2010/11 season though, Ethnikos has not yet opted to do so.