It was a little coffee shop on Laskaridou Street, in the Kallithea district of southern Athens, at the very start of the first decade of the 21st century. For the uninitiated, they were just a group of seniors reminiscing about the past. For those more knowledgeable, however, they included two of the greatest players in Greek football in the 1950s.
One was very tall, a giant for his day. The other one was short with a glint in his eye and a talent for teasing. One time, the tall one told the tale of a trick the short one once played on him. He’d told him to stand at the entrance to a bank in Kallithea, got him to put on a suit, and said a TV crew was on its way to interview him, because they were going to “make a movie” about his life. Well, minutes then hours passed with the tall man waiting, until instead of the TV crew the short one appeared with a few more players of old to laugh at their practical joke.
The old team mates were regulars at the little coffee shop on Laskaridou Street. And as they reminisced about the “good old days”, there was one thing they all agreed on: Everything they achieved back then, they owed to their “guiding lights”: the Helmis brothers. The two brothers, together, had turned Olympiacos into a Legend. They were the ones who transformed the team; who took players out of the attacking line and introduced the famous wing backs formation.
“Olympiacos became the Legend in their hands. They were the ones who changed the formation of players on the field, and who exploited the concept of wingers or wing backs by removing players from the front line”
Rosidis on the right and Mouratis on the left; players who could run the full length of the touch line on both sides of the pitch. It was the brothers who established the role of a dedicated defensive midfielder, and often entrusted it to a tall and versatile player by the name of Babis Kotridis.
And it was Giannis and Vangelis Helmis who upped the importance of the classic offensive playmaker, and found the perfect player for the job in the amazing—and short—Thanasis Bebis. They were managers and club officials in the golden decade of the 1950s, born in the early part of the century. Vangelis was born in 1910. His brother Giannis followed two years later.
What sort of city was the Piraeus of their birth? Well, the Athens-Piraeus electric railway had just been completed. Syngrou Avenue was newly opened, and the port’s roads were starting to acquire modern infrastructure. The first telephones and cars were appearing. The year of Vangelis’ birth also saw the Piraeus Workers’ Center open its doors in the port city. Piraeus was beginning to take shape as a working-class city. This identity was cemented further when, with the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the uprooting of the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Black Sea, refugees settled in huge numbers in Piraeus and surrounding areas, which had been virtually uninhabited until then.
Giannis Helmis (standing, first from the left) amassed an impressive collection of titles as a player and as a coach.
In 1912, the year of Giannis’ birth, the newly acquired armored cruiser “Georgios Averoff” had weighed anchor off Faliro, and the city’s dry docks were brought into service. The first census after the Asia Minor Catastrophe, and the settlement of thousands of refugees in Piraeus, reveals that the total population of the city has risen to 251,659. In 1925, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry is founded. Takis Panagiotopoulos is elected mayor. However, the event of the year is the founding of Olympiacos.
Chronicles don’t include any details on the founding of the team that will go on to change the history of Greek sport. At that time, Vangelis and Giannis Helmis were still students. The first organized team whose jersey they wore was Ethnikos. Vangelis played there for 11 years (1927-1938) as a defensive midfielder. Ethnikos was one of the top teams in the first national league set up by the Hellenic Football Federation. The highpoint in that Club’s history was winning the Cup in 1933, beating Aris Thessaloniki in two legs to do so. The team achieved a 2-2 draw away at Aris’ stadium, then won the second leg 2-1 at the Alexandras Avenue pitch designated as their home field. Vangelis Helmis was in the team that won the Cup that day. And so was his brother Giannis, who played in midfield, too, though a little further up the field than Vangelis.
The team’s victory that day would really put him in the spotlight, and Giannis would go on to make more of a mark than his older brother as a player. He played for Ethnikos from 1927 to 1938. Then he, too, transferred to Olympiacos, where he played until 1949. He also made six appearances for the national team during this period. Vangelis was also in the national squad, but there are no records of any official appearances with the national team.
Giannis filled cabinet after cabinet with trophies as both a player and a coach. As a player: Greek Championships: 1938, 1947 and 1948 (Olympiacos). Greek Cups: 1931 (Ethnikos), 1947 (Olympiacos). Piraeus Championships: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948 και 1949 (Olympiacos). As a coach: Greek Championships: 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 (Olympiacos)). Piraeus Championships: 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 (Olympiacos)). As a player, Vangelis won: one Greek Championship: 1938 (Olympiacos). one Greek Cup: 1931 (Ethnikos), Piraeus Championships: 1928, 1929 (Ethnikos), 1938 (Olympiacos).
As coaches, though, they both left an indelible mark. According to contemporary accounts of the era in the city of Chalkida, when he was working, Vangelis “would brook no interruption nor interference in his work, though owners and team officials were fond of doing just that at the time. Serious, strict and a disciplinarian. Off the field, he was very different.
“Talkative and gregarious with an endless supply of stories and a vivacious way of telling them, he was as quick-witted as he was cool-headed”.
The account goes on to relate an unforgettable incident when Vangelis Helmis set about psyching up one of his players for a game: “He broke a bottle and approached the player… who was prone to panic and get stressed on the field… brandishing the bottle and shouting ‘Get out there, man, and play’!”
He attached particular importance to education, because he believed a player needed a certain intellectual level if he was going to progress. It should be noted that Vangelis Helmis had a permanent disability in one of his legs, which gave him a limp. A gifted raconteur, he liked nothing better than to entertain his fellow coffee shop patrons with his impressions of his “gaffe-prone” players, which were so comical, everyone in the place was soon laughing their heads off.
Under their guidance, Olympiacos won six consecutive championships (1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959) and four Doubles, three of them consecutive (1954, 1957, 1958, 1959). The amazing team that achieved this incredible feat was very much the creation of Vangelis and Giannis Helmis.
Foreign coaches would be appointed later on (Prvoslav Dragićević, Tibor Kemény, Bruno Vale), but the brothers remained in charge overall and had the final say. They remained with the Club for years as sports directors and general manager. In the coffee shop 50 years on, those that knew got it right away. The stars of Olympiacos’ golden age knew that they became Legends thanks to the guidance of Vangelis and Giannis Helmis. Even though the two brothers had already been dead for over 20 years—they both passed in 1980— they were brought back to life at that table through the memories of the distinguished gentlemen around it.
