Peter Raskopoulos

Peter Raskopoulos was born on 22 February 1962 and started as a junior at Earlwood Wanderers.

He joined Sydney Olympic’s youth team in 1977 and made his senior debut against Western Suburbs in the first season of the National Soccer League on 8 August while still only 15.

He represented the Australian schoolboys in 1978 and in 1980 he had a year at Marconi, but then returned to Olympic for the rest of his career.

In 1980 he played for the Socceroos for the first time in two Non-A International matches in the Oceania Cup competing against New Caledonia and Tahiti.

The following year after the resignation of Rudi Gutendorf as national coach, Les Scheinflug took a very young team to Indonesia and Taiwan for the final two matches of the 1982 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign. This was the nucleus of the squad for the 1981 FIFA World Youth Championship. Raskopoulos made his A-International debut as the Captain of the Socceroos against Indonesia on the 30thAugust 1981 in Jakarta.

At the 1981 FIFA World Youth Championship, which was held in Australia, Raskopoulos captained the Young Socceroos in the first of these games where he drove the Australian team from midfield as it shocked Argentina by two goals to one in its opening match of the FIFA World Youth Championship in Sydney. He played in two drawn games against Cameroon and England which saw Australia reach the quarter-finals undefeated. Australia went down to Germany, the eventual winner, by a single goal.

In 1982 Raskopoulos played for the Socceroos as they won the Merlion Cup in Singapore. In 1984 he took part in the ‘World Series’ tournament which pitted Australia A and B teams against clubs including Manchester United, Rangers, Nottingham Forest, Juventus and Iraklis.

He missed the 1986 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign but returned for matches against Czechoslovakia and New Zealand in 1986 and Everton, Chile B, South Korea and others in 1987. His final cap was against Malmo in 1989.

As his playing career wound down he became the football manager at Sydney Olympic from 1989 when Olympic won the NSL Championship and later became senior coach in 1992/93.

In 2001 he became CEO of the club as it won the NSL Grand Final in 2002 and the Premiership in 2003.