The owner of Greece’s most successful club "reportedly faces a battle to avoid custody over match fixing allegations," according to Matt Scott of INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL. According to "as-yet-unconfirmed reports" in Greek newspaper To Vima ("The Step"), the prosecutor in the case has called for Olympiacos Owner Evangelos Marinakis "to be detained until the start of the trial into the criminal charges he faces." The report "comes after the Athens courts’ appeals prosecutor, Stamatis Daskalopoulos, allegedly called for the current restrictions placed on him under his bail conditions to be upgraded to remand." If the courts uphold Daskalopoulos’s reported appeal and place Marinakis in custody, it "would be a major intensification of the case against the shipping magnate." The long-running case against the Olympiacos owner "has caused a huge rift in Greek football." Greece’s other top clubs AEK Athens, PAOK Salonika and Panathinaikos "refused to ratify the list of referees compiled by the HFF and their boycott has led to the formal postponement of the start of the Greek Super League season" (INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL, 9/7).
