The "eternals", alarmed by the coalition of the rest that Maropoulos seemed to be succeeding even threatened to withdraw from the national Championship, terrorizing the smaller ones with the suspicion of loss of revenue from it, delaying its start until 28 November, when the first matchday was set.

[4] Taking advantage of his vocal abilities, he participated in the musical group that surrounded Stelios Kazantzidis, with whom he left for a tour in the Greek immigrants of Germany.

[5] The abstention of Papaioannou put an obstacle on the plans of AEK coach, Tryfon Tzanetis who in the summer of 1965 had taken care to shield the club with impressive transfers such as the defender of Apollon Athens, Tasos Vasiliou, the forward of PAO Safrafolis, Kostas Nikolaidis and the big star the Fostiras in the midfield, Panagiotis Ventouris, while Nikos Stathopoulos, Giorgos Karafeskos and Michalis Simigdalas were promoted from the infrastructure departments to the first team.

However, due to his advanced age, Nestoridis was no more sufficient to fill the gap of Papaioannou and AEK started their competitive activities in the Championship with two defeats and one victory in the first 3 matches.

Αt the beginning of December 1965, the differences between AEK and Papaioannou have begun to bridge and after getting a new contract of 500,000 drachmas, he returned to the team,[6] shortly before the derby with Panathinaikos at the Leoforos Alexandras Stadium.

The definition by the HFF of setting the Final on 10 July 1966, at the Karaiskakis Stadium, brought the reactions of the Olympiacos whose management sent a letter to the Federation announcing their decision not to show up, protesting the advanced date in relation to the preparation of the club of Piraeus for the next season's European Cup.

[11] In the midst of such situations, Kostas Nestoridis, one of the greatest Greek footballers and one of the timeless "yellow-black" legends, departed from the club after 11 years of presence.