Asteras is a Greek football club from the town of Tripoli in Arcadia, Greece. The club was founded in 1931 and since the 2007\u201308 season, they play in Superleague Greece, the top professional league in Greece. The word “Asteras” means “star”. Asteras was founded in 1931, in the area near Tripoli’s railway station and was formally recognised forthwith. However, the club stayed inactive and during 1932 all football clubs in Tripoli were temporarily dissolved. At the same time, Minas Tsavdaris founded a football club and named it “Keramikos” after his home area. Despite his efforts, Keramikos was never formally recognised, and in 1938 Tsavdaris decided to transfer all of the club’s players to Asteras Tripolis, which was still legally recognised. This signified the revival of the club and Asteras managed to compete in the inaugural season of the regional Arcadian League. However, the subsequent German occupation of Greece ended all league competitions abruptly and the club was dissolved once again. After World War II, Asteras was reformed under the name “Neos Asteras” and was accordingly recognised by Tripoli’s courts on 23 June 1947. Asteras won five consecutive titles in the Arcadian League (1957\u201362). The team won consecutive promotions and managed to play for two seasons in the Greek Second Division (1961\u201363), thus becoming the first team from Tripoli to ever participate in such a high division. In the summer of 1963, Asteras merged with Aris\u2013Atromitos and the new team was named “Athlitikos Omilos Tripolis” (Athletic Club of Tripoli, AOT). AOT’s function was based in Asteras’ statute and the new club continued its activities until 1968, when it was dissolved once again and was subsequently merged with Arcadikos to form Panarcadikos. Asteras was reformed again in 1978. The club participated in the regional Arcadian League until 2003. At 2001 the club entered a new era and led an outstanding streak of performances. They remained unbeaten at home for over 5 years (from 2001 to November 2006) and they managed to move up four divisions, earning the promotion for the Greek Super League as Second Division champions on 12 May 2007. Asteras made a spectacular start in their first season in the Super League. Their first ever win was against Panathinaikos (1\u20130 in Tripoli) and their first away win against OFI in Crete (3\u20130). The season was marked by some outstanding performances with the most memorable being the 1\u20130 home victory against champions Olympiacos. They also managed to win 2\u20131 against AEK Athens and 2\u20130 against PAOK at home. Asteras Tripolis became the first and only newly promoted Superleague team that managed to beat Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, PAOK (home and away) and AEK Athens in its first ever appearance in the top division. Coach Paulo Campos left Asteras on 24 February 2008 with assistant manager Panagiotis Tzanavaras taking over for the rest of the 2007\u201308 season. Asteras finally ended 7th, missing the European spot in the last games. In the summer of 2008 Asteras announced Carlos Carvalhal as their new manager. He was sacked in mid-season due to poor results which led the team near the relegation zone. He was succeeded by former AEK Athens caretaker manager, Nikos Kostenoglou. In 2009 Asteras signed the Argentine former Internazionale assistant Mario G\u00f3mez as their new coach. The 2012\u201313 season was the most successful in Asteras’ history. They finished third in the Super League (and fourth in the play-offs), securing a place for the 2013\u201314 Europa League. Meanwhile, they reached the first Greek Cup final in their history, losing 1\u20133 to Olympiacos after extra time. Therefore Asteras Tripolis secured for the first time in history the outing in European competitions in the Europa League for the period 2012-13, where they participated in the second qualifying round. In their first appearance in European competition, they managed to get the qualification for the next phase against the Azeri Interbaku in a penalty shootout (4-2) in the return match at home in Tripoli, as both games ended 1-1. In the next phase they played against Portuguese Maritimo and were eliminated undefeated (with two draws) because of the away goals (1-1 in Tripoli 0-0 in Portugal). The second European presence of the Arcadian club was the next year, when they played Rapid Vienna for the third qualifying round of the Europa League (2013-14). In the first game in Tripoli they drew 1-1, while in the return in Vienna they lost 3-1 and were eliminated from the institution. The highlight for the club was the participation in the Europa League groups in the period 2014-15, after three successive qualifications in primary phases. They were initially drawn to the second qualifying round with the Finnish Rovaniemi and the first game in Finland finished 1-1. In the repetitive game at Tripoli, Asteras managed to win (4-2) for the first time in their history in European, and thus qualifying to the next round where they were drawn with German Mainz. With a total score of 3-2 (0-1 away defeat, 3-1 victory at home) they managed to overcome the obstacle and the German team, continuing to the tournament, to face Maccabi Tel Aviv. In the first game in Tripoli, they won 2-0 and despite the defeat by 1-3 in the return held in Larnaca (due to the events in Gaza), they qualified to the group stage in the 3rd group and they came up against the Spurs, Besiktas and Partizan Belgrade, finishing in third place. This year 2015-16, having again secured their presence in the group stage, they were drawn in the 11th group, with Sparta Prague, Schalke and APOEL. Theodoros Kolokotronis Stadium (formally Asteras Tripolis Stadium) is a privately owned football stadium in Tripoli, Greece. Its capacity is 7,600. The stadium was renamed on 22 November 2012 in honour of the hero of the Greek War of Independence, Theodoros Kolokotronis<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Asteras is a Greek football club from the town of Tripoli in Arcadia, Greece. The club was founded in 1931 and since the 2007\u201308 season, they play in Superleague Greece, the top professional league in … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[37,99],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-teams","tag-37","tag-99","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\/817","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=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}