He was young man who in the one-and-a-half years that he wore the black and white shirt managed to make only friends, before his life was cut tragically short in a car accident when he was returning home from a 5-a-side match at night.<\/p>\n
Panagiotis<\/strong>\u00a0had two passions, football and cars, and it was the latter which was to cost him his life during the best moments of his career, at the age of just 22, on February 9, 1998.<\/p>\n Katsouris<\/strong>\u00a0was born on October 28, 1976 and came to\u00a0PAOK<\/strong>\u00a0from\u00a0Naoussa<\/strong>\u00a0in the summer of 1996. Perhaps the best left-back of his generation, he was already an international with the\u00a0Under-21<\/strong>\u00a0side, and this soon proved to be the best ticket for a fast-track entry into the\u00a0PAOK<\/strong>\u00a0first team. On September 8, 1996, on the opening day of the new season, the\u00a0Swede<\/strong>\u00a0Gunder Bengtsson<\/strong>\u00a0did not hesitate to give him a starting place in a 3-1 defeat by\u00a0OFI<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0Crete.<\/strong><\/p>\n As he started \u2013 with a match against OFI \u2013 he also ended his circle at\u00a0PAOK\u00a0<\/strong>against the same opposition, as just a few days before his tragic accident, on January 25, 1998, he played for 12 minutes at the\u00a0Toumba<\/strong>. He played a total of 29 times with the Double-headed Eagle on his chest, and scored 3 goals.<\/p>\n Every year, the\u00a0PAOK<\/strong>\u00a0family honors the memory of\u00a0Panagiotis<\/strong>. Since 2009, the annual\u00a0\u00abPanagiotis Katsouris\u00bb<\/strong>\u00a0tournament has been established in his memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was 26 years ago today that one of the black pages in PAOK\u2019s history books was written. Panagiotis Katsouris tragically lost his life in a car accident, sending everyone in the PAOK family into mourning.","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":430973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,4289],"tags":[2457,4074,4361,7819],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n