In the 18 months he sported the black-and-white shirt, he made many friends. And fate would have it that he would lose his life returning home after spending an evening with them playing 5×5.<\/p>\n
Panagiotis was passionate about two things: football and cars. Sadly his second passion would betray him at the best moment of his career, at the age of 22, on 9 February 1998.<\/p>\n
Born on 28 October 1976, Panagiotis Katsouris<\/strong> joined PAOK from Naoussa in the summer of 1996. Arguably the best left-back of his generation, he was already a member of Greece U21s and that proved his ticket to PAOK\u2019s line-up. On 8 September 1996, on the opening day of the league, Gunder Bengtsson fielded him from the start in the encounter against OFI Crete (3-1).<\/p>\n His career at PAOK began with a match against OFI Crete and ended with a match against the Cretan side as well. A few days before the tragic accident, on 25 January 1988, he featured for 12 minutes in Toumba Stadium. He had a total of 29 games for the \u201cDouble-Headed Eagle\u201d conjuring up 3 goals.<\/p>\n PAOK family honours Panagiotis\u2019s memory every year. Since 2009, they have established the annual \u201cPanagiotis Katsouris\u201d Academies Tournament, one of the best youth tournaments in the Balkans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been twenty years since the untimely death of Panagiotis Katsouris, but his memory remains vivid and strong.","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":430973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1520,5,1524,4289],"tags":[2324,4074,4361,4364,4737,7422],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n