5 former Premier League players you had no idea moved to the Greek Super League
Former Premier League players are always cropping up in interesting locations, particularly if they have struggled for form during their time in England.
It’s always fun to check the top scorers’ list in a faraway land and realise that a former Premier League icon is banging them in for fun.
Here, we have looked into five former Premier League players plying their trade in the Greek Super League.
Federico Macheda
Remember him? Macheda burst onto the scene as a young pup in a side full of Manchester United icons in the 2008-09 season.
And he made an immediate impact off the bench in a 3-2 win against Aston Villa, Cruyff turning a defender and thumping the ball top bins for a 93rd-minute winner.
As a measure of how long ago it was since he immediately became a United hero, Ryan Giggs assisted the goal. Macheda cropped up again the week after with another winner of the bench, this time against Sunderland.
For the first of those goals, the streets literally won’t forget him, but the Premier League soon did, as the Italian only ended up playing 14 times in the competition.
He’s had spells at several clubs across Europe, with highlights including Doncaster Rovers, Novara and Ankaragucu.
He is now turning out for Asteras Aktor in the Greek Super League and has six goals and two assists in 18 games.
Anthony Martial
Martial spent a couple of months without a club after his contract with Manchester United ended after nine years in the summer of 2024.
But he was soon found by AEK Athens, who’ve been reaping the benefits of having a striker who notched 90 goals during his time as a Red Devil.
Martial has nine goals and two assists for Athens so far this season. Only once in his final four seasons at United did the Frenchman score that many goals.
While the Premier League might have gotten too quick, Greece is proving a simple enough challenge.
Erik Lamela
Sharing the field with Martial at AEK Athens is former Tottenham star Lamela.
The winger played more than 250 times for Spurs, where he reached the Champions League final in 2018-19. He also won the Puskas Award during his time there.
Two years on from leaving north London, Lamela had won the Europa League with Sevilla, and two years since that triumph, he finds himself in Athens, where he has three goals and three assists in the Greek Super League.
Perhaps the Ouzo-fuelled evenings are hard to shake off, though, as Lamela has as many yellow cards (six) as direct goal contributions in the league, as well as one red.
Dejan Lovren
A Premier League and Champions League winner with Liverpool, Lovren has played in three different countries since departing from Anfield.
He initially moved to Zenit St Petersburg, where he played 63 games across three seasons, before moving to Lyon, where he’d played the majority of his football prior to Liverpool.
In the summer of 2024, Lovren moved to PAOK Thessaloniki on a free transfer.
The 35-year-old has started seven games, but has also been hampered by injuries, and was not included in the Europa League squad.
Ally Samatta
A former Premier League player you may not remember unless you’re an Aston Villa fan, Samatta is the only Tanzanian ever to play in the English top flight, but did so just 14 times and scored only once.
Ollie Watkins was signed by Villa in September 2020, and Samatta was loaned out two weeks later, never to return.
After spells at Fenerbahce, Royal Antwerp and a return to former side Genk, Samatta wound up at PAOK Thessaloniki for the start of the 2023-24 season.
He scored two goals in 20 Greek Super League games, and has already bettered that tally this season, with three goals in eight games – each coming in big wins – as well as a league assist and a goal in the Europa League.
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