Nikos Sevastopoulos

Nikos Sevastopoulos (Greek: Νίκος Σεβαστόπουλος) was a Greek professional footballer who played as a forward and was nicknamed the "Pelé of AEK" for his skill and dark complexion as a youth star. He was born on 26 February 1945 in Tavros, Greece, and grew up playing in the neighbourhood pitches before joining local side Panthisaikos at age eleven in 1956. A year later AEK Athens youth coaches Christos Ribas and Georgios Daispangos enrolled him in the club academies. By 1963 he was a key player in AEK's youth championship side and for Greece's under-19 team, scoring in a 7-2 win over West Germany.

Promoted to AEK's senior team by Heinrich Müller, he debuted on 13 October 1963 in a 0-0 draw away to Iraklis. Conflict with club power broker Kleanthis Maropoulos sidelined him, and after a suspension he spent months with Hellenic of Cape Town in South Africa, impressing enough in a friendly against Real Madrid that a Madrid trial was arranged, though military service brought him back to Greece instead. After further spells in South Africa and the upheaval of the 1967 junta, he returned in 1968. Under Branko Stanković he became a first-team regular in 1968-69, scoring four league goals in eighteen appearances and AEK's only goal in a European Cup quarter-final defeat to Spartak Trnava on his twenty-fourth birthday, 26 February 1969. Payment disputes and another Cape Town departure ended his AEK contract that year. Across his AEK years he made about twenty senior appearances and four goals.

On 24 September 1969 he joined Vyzas Megara, where he remained the core of his club career until retiring in 1981 at age thirty-six, interrupted by Canadian seasons with Toronto Homer (as Gus Hatoupis), Windsor Stars and a brief North American Soccer League stint with Toronto Metros-Croatia alongside Eusébio. From 1974 he also worked as a bartender at the Hilton Hotel in Athens, staying until 1997 while still competing in veterans' tournaments abroad; he later worked in a cosmetics firm with his wife.

Sevastopoulos died in the early hours of Friday, 2 October 2026, at Attikon Hospital in Athens after a period of serious health problems. He was eighty-one. Greek sports media, including Ethnos, Sport24 and Eleftheros Typos, marked the loss of a distinctive AEK figure of the 1960s whose European Cup goal on his birthday and free-spirited career made him a lasting part of yellow-and-black lore.