Kifisia

Two clubs from the same northern Athens suburb, A.O. Kifisia and A.O.K. Elpidoforos, merged in 2012 to form a new senior side. The new club, Athlitiki Enosi Kifisia, began its competitive history in the Athens regional pyramid and won the Athens FA Cup in its first season, beating Aigaleo 4–3 on penalties.

From there the climb ran through every tier available. The Athens First Division title in 2018–19 took them into the national game; the Gamma Ethniki group win in 2020–21 took them out of it again, upwards. Two seasons later they were champions of the southern group of Super League 2, and after a spell in the top flight they repeated the trick, winning the same group again in 2024–25.

What a club promoted that fast does not have is a ground to match. The Zirineio, the municipal stadium on Kifissias Avenue, holds 1,350 — 1,050 in the north stand, 300 for away supporters in the south. That is a figure from regional football, not from a Super League 1 fixture list, and it is the reason the club became a tenant of the Leoforos Alexandras Stadium, better known as the Apostolos Nikolaidis, from 2026–27. The move takes the blue-and-whites into a bowl of 16,003 seats.

It also takes them into somebody else's home. The Apostolos Nikolaidis is Panathinaikos ground, in Ampelokipoi, a few kilometres down the same avenue that runs past the Zirineio — so Kifisia now play their league football as guests in the stadium of one of the clubs they are trying to beat, in a city where the derbies were settled long before 2012. The history between them belongs to the landlord.