At the press conference he held, Vangelis Liolios was asked about any mistakes he realized he had made during his presidency of the Hellenic Olympic Committee (EOK) and replied:
“If there are so many mistakes, how can you pick just one? I’ve made mistakes; I may even have made mistakes I’m not aware of. People point them out to me sometimes—I accept some, but not others. Maybe with the passage of time, I’ll understand them better. You can make mistakes in many areas—in choosing colleagues, in how you place your trust…
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
I’ve made human errors. I’m uncompromising about many things, and that’s a flaw in my character. But to achieve things in the face of so much opposition, you have to be uncompromising. I’ve made mistakes that affected the course of basketball with the national team, right from the start. At the time, it was the right decision; in hindsight, it wasn’t.
My mind was set on Spanoulis from the very beginning; if I could relive 2021, I’d probably make the same decision and repeat the same mistake. It may be a mistake that has affected a lot of things. I have tremendous respect for Vasilis; he’s on the national team—he’s got a different kind of passion running through his veins. No one else has that kind of passion—respect.”
*photo source: fiba.basketball
