Apostolos Giannou was born in Naoussa on January 25, 1990 and he is a Greek international (since 2016 with Australia) footballer who plays as a striker. His family migrated to Australia at an early age, growing up in Melbourne, Victoria, where he was known as Paul Giannou. He started football at a children’s level in Melbourne Canons and Hellas Melbourne, and then at the age of 14 and 15, was chosen by the Victoria team (VIS), with whom he participated in friendly matches before the 2006-07 Australian League with the intent to sign a contract. He was then tried by the reserves of Dutch Eindhoven, but did not succeed, so he returned to Melbourne and signed a six-month contract with Melbourne Canons. In mid-2007 he came to Greece for the first time on behalf of Apollon Kalamarias, that at that time played in the 2nd National, marking his first goal in late 2008 when in 81 he scored the only goal in the defeat from Corfu by 3-1. He continued scoring five more times in the 2nd National Championship in 2008-09 before taking a transfer for Kavala, which was promoted to the Super League for the 2009-10 season, signing a five-year contract. On Nov. 21, 2009, Giannou made his debut with his new team, passing through as a 79th minute substitution and scoring in 88′ to win against AEK with 2-1. At that time Giannou was one of the five “Australians” of the club, as he co-opted with: Robert Stamboliev, Zeljko Kalats, Andrea Gova and Greg Moore. After the relegation of the Macedonian club, he was released and on September 30, 2011 he signed a three-year contract with PAOK, making his first appearance for the 2011-12 season on the draw with OFI on Oct. 16, taking Vladimir Ivits’s place at the 78th minute. His first goal was scored again in the away match against OFI with 2-0 on February 11, 2012. During his presence in the Greek Championship he has been named twice as the most valuable football player of the match, one with Kavala and one with PAOK. In January 2013 he was loaned to Platanias, while in the summer of the same year he left as a free transfer to continue his career in Panionios. After two years of staying in the team, at the summer of 2015, he agreed with Asteras Tripolis for the next three years. In February 2016 he was transferred to Guangzhou, being the second Greek international footballer to compete in the Chinese championship after Abraham Papadopoulos. In January 2018 he moved to Cyprus for AEK Larnaka, where he is playing until today. In 2006, Giannou participated in the Australian K-17 in the K-17 Asian qualifier qualifiers, where he scored in Indonesia’s 3-1 victory, being the only Victorian player to take part in the event held in Japan. In 2008 he represented Greece for the first time in the European Championship qualifiers in 2008, where the Greek team qualified for the final stage of the event. There, coached by Alexis Alexiou, he made two appearances, the 1-1 draw with Italy and the 3-0 defeat from England. On September 5, 2010 he was selected with the U21 for the European Championship qualifiers of this category. In March 2015 he was first called to the National Men by Sergio Markarian for the away match against Hungary, but without playing. His debut took place a few months later, on November 17th of the same year, when coach Michael Skimbe give him place in an away friendly match against Turkey (0-0), replacing Kostas Mitroglou in the 70th minute. In February 2016 he decided to chose to play with the colors of the Australian national team<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apostolos Giannou was born in Naoussa on January 25, 1990 and he is a Greek international (since 2016 with Australia) footballer who plays as a striker. His family migrated to Australia at an early age, … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[24,48,31],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-players-gr","tag-24","tag-48","tag-31","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}