FC Dinamo Tbilisi will compete with PAOK FC in Europa League play-off. Matches will take place on August 18 and 25 in Tbilisi and Thessaloniki.
One of the outstanding football teams of Greek football – PAOK FC (Panthessalonikios Athlitikos Omilos Konstantinoupoliton) was established in 1926 by Greek Constantinopolitans who fled to Thessaloniki from the city of Constantinople in the wake of the Greco-Turkish War. Emblem of the team is a Byzantine-style double-headed eagle, adopted three years after the establishment of the club. The team's traditional colors are black as sadness for the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 and the end of the Greek presence in Anatolia, and white as hope for recovery. Toumba Stadium is a football stadium in Thessaloniki with the capacity of 29 000 spectators.
PAOK currently plays in the top-flight Superleague Greece, which they have won twice (1975–76 and 1984–85). They have won also four times the Greek Football Cup (in 1971–72, 1973–74, 2000–01 and 2002–03 seasons). With the 14th place (1995–96) being the worst position ever achieved, the team has never been relegated to a lower national division since its establishment in 1926, a feat achieved only by rivals Olympiakos F.C. and Panathinaikos F.C.
The team has appeared several times in the UEFA Europa League competition. Their best European performance was in the 1973–74 season, when they reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. With 504 matches, Giorgos Koudas is the record holder of the team. Giorgos Koudas scored 170 goals. Besides them, stars of PAOK FC are: Konstantinos Iosifidis, Christos Terzanidis, Ioanis Gunaris, Ioanis Damanakis and Theodoros Zagorakis.
In Superleague Greece PAOK FC took 4th place. It won 13 matches from 30, lost 8 and 9 matches finished with draw. The goal difference is 45/32 in favor of our rival. In current UEFA Champions League it competed with AFC Ajax in 3rd qualifying round and lost (1:1, 1:2).
Famous former Slovak referee Ľuboš Michel is the president of PAOK FC. Former footballer of this team 39 years old Serbian Vlaimir Ivic is the manager of the club since March 2016.