Tavlaridis was contract in the summer of 2009 with Saint-Étienne and a number of Premier League clubs were at the time believed to be prepared to offer him a route back to England.
On 30 April 2010, AEL announced that an agreement had been reached with the 29-year-old centre-back who would join the club in the summer on a free transfer, when his contract with les Verts had been finally wound down.
Nicknamed 'Taureau' in France because of his bullish style of play, the Greek was initially a success in Ligue 1 with Lille and then Saint-Étienne, though he fell out of favour at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard earlier in the season under head coach Alain Perrin.
Tavlaridis with Panathinaikos also scored in the game with PAOK in Touba for playoffs brought the club to practically within one point from clinching a spot in next season's UEFA Champions League qualifiers.
[19] Moreover, Tavlaridis has joined a star-studded array of international active and retired players for the 12th Annual Match Against Poverty which will take place on 20 April at the Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium in Saint-Etienne, France.
He will play along Didier Drogba, Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane all of them UNDP Goodwill Ambassadors, for a match against an Saint-Étienne All Stars team to help boost Ebola recovery efforts.
[20][21] On 30 December 2015, Tavlaridis verbally agreeing to renew his contract with the Greens until the summer of 2017 and promising that, in January, he would put pen to paper,[22] which he eventually did five days later.
On 12 January 2017, Tavlaridis was another footballer (after Michael Essien, Rasmus Thelander, Jens Wemmer and Niklas Hult) in eight months to file an appeal against Panathinaikos over delayed payments.
[26] Tavlaridis managed to play only twice for Greece in 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup, having fallen out of favor with coach Otto Rehhagel as well as Akis Zikos, Ieroklis Stoltidis, Grigoris Georgatos, Nikos Lyberopoulos and Vasilios Tsartas.
[28] On 17 June 2015, in a friendly match against Poland, at the beginning of the second half, he wore the jersey of the Greek team after almost ten years, by replacing Sokratis Papastathopoulos.