Maccabi Tel Aviv FC is happy to announce the appointment of Georgios Donis as the Head Coach of the first team after the 50-year-old Greek who coached at Panathinaikos in the past two years, signed a one-year-deal with an option to extend by a further season.
Donis will be joined by a coaching staff which has been working with him for several years and that includes: Assistant Coach Makis Aggelinas, Miodrag Medan as a 2nd Assistant & Scouting, Goalkeeping Coach Panagiotis Maliaritsis, Georgios Georgiadis as an analyst and Grigoris Georgitsas as a Fitness Coach.
Born in Germany Donis, played for Panathinaikos as a midfielder and won two League Championships and three Greek Cups between 1991-96. He then moved to England and joined Blackburn Rovers (96/97), returned to Greece and played for one season at AEK (97/98) before returning to England and playing for Sheffield United (99) and Huddersfield Town (99/00) where he finished his playing career. Donis made 24 international appearances scoring five goals for the Greek national team between 1991-1997.
Donis began his coaching career in 2002 with Ilisiakos in the fourth division and within two seasons won promotion to the second division. In 2004 he was appointed at AEL and in his first season in charge won promotion with the Larissa based club to the top flight. The following season Donis and Larissa finished eighth in the table and won the Greek Cup beating Panathinaikos in the final. Donis and Larissa began the 2007/08 season with a European campaign on the way to the UEFA Cup group stages, and ended the season sixth in the table.
After a six month period in 2008 as the coach of AEK Athens, Donis was appointed in 2009 as Head Coach of Atromitos and guided them to the Greek Cup Final twice in succession but didn’t win the trophy. Donis coached PAOK in the 2012/13 season before moving to Cyprus the following season to join APOEL Nicosia and guiding them to the double winning the Cypriot League and Cup. Donis successfully guided APOEL to the 2014/15 Champions League Group stage where they were drawn in a group with Barcelona, PSG and Ajax.
In 2015 Donis was appointment as manager of Al-Hilal as he guided the Saudi club to the semi Final of the AFC Champions League as well as victory in the Saudi King Cup of Champions. In 2016/17 Donis switched to the United Arab Emirates and managed Al-Sharjah before returning for second spells with APOEL Nicosia (17/18) and two more seasons with Panathinaikos (18/20) from where he is joining Maccabi.
