Angelos Charisteas joined other more mythical Greek heroes when he headed the winning goal at the Euro 2004 final against hosts Portugal – but since then he has sunk career-wise into the equivalent of Hades.
It all looked so different for Charisteas as he appeared to have shown his then Bundesliga club Werder Bremen that he could produce more than the paltry four goals he had scored for them the season leading up to the European championships.
However, it mattered not a jot to Bremen, who made it pretty clear that he was not considered to be first choice and thus after a summer of highs he was plunged into uncertainty and Greece’s German coach Otto Rehhagel a former Bremen coach – advised him to look for another team.
Thus it was in January 2005 that Dutch giants Ajax came knocking on his door, desperate to find a top replacement for Swedish star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who left for Juventus.
If he thought that five million euros transfer fee had allowed him to enter the Elysian fields with a chance to really prove himself at club level, then he was quickly disabused of that notion as then coach Henk Ten Cate placed him fifth in the list behind Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Ryan Babel, Markus Rosenberg and a certain Rydell Poepon.
However, bizarrely he ended up at Ajax’s bitter rivals Feyenoord, which went down like a lead balloon with the Rotterdam side’s supporters, some of whose more hardnosed members marched in protest – and they looked to have been right when Charisteas failed to score in his first 10 appearances.
So low had his star fallen he was shipped off to traditional German relegation candidates FC Nuremberg for just 2.5mil euros – his value in the market halved in just two years.
Thus no wonder that back at the Euro stage where he made his mark four years ago he expressed his delight to have changed scene.
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klaas jan huntelaar,
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markus rosenberg,
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ryan babel,
rydell,
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zlatan ibrahimovic
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