Minas Lysandrou, CEO of OFI Crete FC: ‘Friendship is one of the fundamental pillars of football’
OFI Crete joined the European Football for Development Network this June. The Greek club prepared their new season in the Netherlands and organised a joint #Morethanfootball action before the friendly match against Dutch member NEC Nijmegen. The CEO of OFI Crete FC, Minas Lysandrou, explained what friendship means and how his club wants to use and contribute to the network.
EFDN: What does the term ‘friendship’ mean to you and football?
Minas Lysandrou: ‘In general terms, friendship is the closest expression to family. Sometimes the commitment and connection to friendship is even stronger than to family. It’s something very important in life. You have to have friends to feel alive, to share emotions, to help each other in difficult times. When it comes to football, and we simplify the thought, it’s the reason why football exists. I think the first football game was held because some friends decided to play together with a ball. In my opinion, friendship is one of the fundamental pillars of the game and is strongly connected to it. Even today friends love to play and watch football together, to laugh and celebrate together or being sad together when they lose. All these emotions are connected to friendship. A team should be composed of friends, what’s inside the pitch, should also be outside of it. Supporters should be friends. Of course, you can’t be with everybody. Everyone involved in football should have that kind of friendship, in the sense that honest networking and a friendly environment is necessary to create a healthy framework for football. Think about it, I give this statement around a game, a friendly game! Football is so strong that even playing with or against someone for the first time, the common love for football and for the game makes you friends even for 90 minutes and can last a long time after it.’
EFDN: What makes your club special as a ‘family of friends’?
Lysandrou: ‘We are a club that focuses on the character and mentality of players before they sign for us. The same counts for the people who work in our offices. You don’t become good friends with people who don’t belong or fit in your sphere, who don’t share the same mentality. We are professionals but we use the philosophy of friendship to compose our team. I’m happy to hear that the Dutch players experienced a warm welcome to the club.‘
EFDN: How important is it to participate as a club in CSR activities?
Lysandrou: It’s very important! In the end, it’s one of the reasons we are here; it’s the result of all activities included with people, with EFDN, as we share this CSR philosophy, and policy, and strategy. Friendship is also the wheel for CSR activities around football. It is about giving. It is a top priority of our club. The support we gave to the local community in Crete after the flooding last year was an excellent action but this was even bigger than CSR. This help really came from the heart, not from a project. It belongs under the umbrella of CSR but it was a human will to help and give in that case.
EFDN: What benefits does your club expect from the European wide collaboration within EFDN?
Lysandrou: I was the CEO of another club in Greece, AEK Athens, for almost five years and I knew the EFDN organisation and its people from that time since AEK Athens is an active member of the Network. EFDN gives a lot of value to our club. I liked this structure so much that joining EFDN was one of my priorities once I started at OFI Crete FC. I wanted to strengthen the existing CSR programme of OFI and the perfect connection on a European level is becoming a member of EFDN. We sent in the application less than a week after I arrived at the club. In quality, EFDN is one of the most important organisations to be part of. It’s a great honour for OFI, to become a member of this large ‘family of friends’. We want to help too and show we can achieve more by using the knowhow and the support of EFDN and its network.’
Read our interviews with OFI players Mike van Duinen and Boy Waterman here.
Read more about OFI Crete FC’s programmes on their club member page.
