Nikos Karelis: From Heraklion to Mumbai

The Greek striker is impressing in Mumbai in the latest stop of an eventful career that has seen him play in six different countries.

Nikos Karelis
📸: Sandeep Shetty /Focus Sports/ FSDL

Nikos Karelis did not expect to be playing in India. Not after his breakthrough as a teenager, where his performances earned interest from the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea. Not when he was bagging goals for fun with Panathinaikos and Genk. Not even when Mumbai City FC first approached him with his contract winding down.

Eventually, Mumbai City convinced Karelis to add another stop to his nomadic career. The Greek striker has adjusted to life in India and he is now up and firing, with four goals in his last five games and firmly in the Indian Super League’s Golden Boot race. 


Karelis was always going to have an eventful career. When he was 16 — an age when most players are still being nurtured in the academy â€” the Heraklion native made his debut for Ergotelis FC in the Greek Super League. He entered the pitch with just over ten minutes remaining in a 2-0 win over Skoda Xanthi, becoming the club’s youngest-ever player in the competition in the process.

His achievements did not go unnoticed. Premier League giants Arsenal, impressed with what they had seen, invited the young Karelis to go on trial with the club, giving him a chance to join the club for a few days and show them what he could do.

“It was a really, really good experience for [me] to go there,” he says. “It was not something that my agent or someone else said, Okay, pick this kid from Greece, from Heraklion, to go to England for trials.”

He played with the u16s at a youth tournament in Italy, scoring twice to help Arsenal win the tournament. By the end of the trial, having impressed, the Gunners wanted to sign him permanently, but some of the staff had reservations about signing him off of a limited trial. They wanted him to return for a longer time — 20 days â€” before making a decision, which Ergotelis were not willing to allow.

“At the time, I already had a professional contract,” Karelis explains. “My coach there was like, if they want, they can come and watch you, but you cannot go there for 20 days.”

Shortly after, another London club came knocking: this time, Arsenal’s fierce rivals Chelsea. The Blues were also at the tournament and liked what they saw, and planned to go to Heraklion to meet with him and his father.

However, Chelsea was in hot water for their transfer business — particularly the signing of 16-year-old GaĂ«l Kakuta from RC Lens, which eventually resulted in a transfer ban — ruining any chance of a deal. Karelis would stay at Ergotelis, and wouldn’t leave until 2012 when he joined Russian side Amkar Perm.

He would spend just one year in Russia before returning to Greece, this time signing for Panathinaikos. It was in Athens where he would really break onto the scene. In his debut season, he would bag eight goals and assist eight more in all competitions, including one in the final of the Greek Cup in a 4-1 win over Panathinaikos.

The next year, his ascension continued. Karelis scored an impressive 19 goals in all competitions, earning him a spot in the Greek Super League Best XI and interest from clubs around Europe. It was during this time that he would earn the first of 19 caps for the Greek national team.

Karelis would stay in Greece for another six months, leaving for Belgian side KRC Genk in January 2016. Remarkably, he still had time to record another 14 goal contributions for Panathinaikos. In Belgium, he immediately picked up where he left off, scoring eleven goals in the 2nd half of the season and helping his side reach the Europa League.

Unfortunately, Karelis wouldn’t get a full season in Belgium. He started his next season off well, scoring 18 goals in all competitions, but on December 27, the Greek striker suffered a cruciate ligament injury in a 2-0 win over Gent. This injury kept him out for the remainder of the season, and more: he wouldn’t return to action until late October.

“If you have a very big injury, it’s really hard to get back on track and to reach the same level as you’ve been before,” he says. “For me, it was really difficult.”

Despite recovering from injury, Karelis wouldn’t stay in Belgium long. He played the latter half of the 2017/18 season with Genk but would be loaned back to Greece with PAOK the following season. His role in Thessaloniki was limited, though, and while he would win two trophies with the club, including his first league title, he would again be on the move the following summer.

In England, Brentford was trying a radical new project based on a sort of “Moneyball” approach, finding players that were undervalued as they attempted to earn promotion to the Premier League. The Bees, led by manager Thomas Frank, liked what they saw, and offered Karelis a one-year contract with a club option for another year. Then, on his first start of the season, he would suffer a cruciate ligament injury on his other knee.

“The only thing that I said at this time was, come on, I need to do everything to come back as fast as I can,” he says. “Let’s go. Let’s move on forward. As a professional, you need to move on.”

His injury kept him out for the remainder of the season, preventing him from making another appearance for Brentford. In October 2020, he joined Dutch side Den Haag on a free transfer, but with the club struggling and the negative atmosphere, he would leave in February.

After leaving Den Haag, he returned to Greece, signing for Greek Super League side Panetolikos. In his first season, his minutes were limited as the club barely avoided relegation. Over the next two seasons, though, he would regain his previous form, scoring a combined 23 goals and winning the club’s Player of the Season award during this time. He would become the club’s captain, but with his contract expiring in 2024, other clubs started to take interest.

One of these clubs was Mumbai City FC, an ambitious club in the world’s most populous country. Part of the City Football Group which owns the likes of Manchester City and Girona, among others, Mumbai City had already made history, becoming the first Indian club to win a game in the AFC Champions League in 2022, and the first to win both the League Shield (regular season) and ISL Cup (playoffs) in the same season.

Karelis wasn’t immediately interested.

“At the time, I was like, Listen, you know, I still have few games to go. I want to think about my time here to finish as good as I can,” he says. “And India is not something that I have in my mind right now, actually, to tell you the truth.”

Once the Greek Super League season was finished, Mumbai returned, this time with an offer. Now, Karelis had to think about it. He had never played outside of Europe before, and had to think about his family and his kids, and how they would all adjust to life in India.

Eventually, after researching schools and consulting another Greek expat in India, East Bengal forward Dimitrios Diamantakos, Karelis made his decision: he was joining Mumbai.

Karelis Mumbai
📸: Sandeep Shetty /Focus Sports/ FSDL

“The club really wanted me, and I didn’t find the reason not to come,” he says. “They showed me that they were trusting … me, and they were believing that if I come, we will have a successful year with them. So I just took the chance.”

There were some difficulties with the move. His family had to stay in Greece and wouldn’t be able to join him in India until December. On the playing side, he had to get adjusted to a completely new climate, league, and team.

“We started well, but something was missing. We didn’t have the chemistry,” he says. “We had a few bad games.”

Despite Karelis scoring five goals in the club’s opening six games, they won just two of those, against FC Goa and Kerala Blasters. Karelis scored in both. However, their recent form has taken a bit of an uptick.

As of this writing, the club sits sixth in the Indian Super League with seven games remaining — as it stands, good enough for a playoff spot and a chance to win the ISL Cup in back-to-back seasons. Karelis is confident that the club will continue to improve.

“And now,” he says, “I feel that I know my teammates … and the philosophy of the coach, what they want exactly, and also I’m adjusted [to] the weather. So it’s something that I didn’t have in the beginning of the season.”

And his recent form is playing a big part in the club’s success. He has four goals in his last five games, helping the club gain big results against the likes of Chennaiyin FC, East Bengal, and Punjab FC. Only one player in the ISL has more non-penalty goals, while he is also directly involved in nearly 50% of the club’s league goals this season.

As for his initial reservations about moving to India, they have largely been quashed. The league might not be rated highly by foreigners — or the AFC, which ranks it as the confederation’s 17th-best league, but as Karelis can attest, it’s better than people give it credit for, and it’s only continuing to improve.

“My friends from Europe, they asked me, like, Yeah, okay, but the level is not so high. I said, Yeah, I can say that, but you can join me, and you can see by yourself, like, it’s not so easy,” he laughs.

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All images provided by Mumbai City FC and via [Sandeep Shetty /Focus Sports/ FSDL]. This article has been edited for brevity & clarity. All statistics are via Transfermarkt unless otherwise specified.

Top photo: Nikolaos Karelis of Mumbai City FC celebrates after scoring the goal during match 36 played between Mumbai City FC and Odisha FC of the Indian Super League (ISL) 2024 -25 season held at the Mumbai Football Arena, Mumbai, on 27th October 2024. [Sandeep Shetty /Focus Sports/ FSDL]

Second photo: Nikolaos Karelis of Mumbai City FC celebrates after scoring the goal during match 36 played between Mumbai City FC and Odisha FC of the Indian Super League (ISL) 2024 -25 season held at the Mumbai Football Arena, Mumbai, on 27th October 2024. [Sandeep Shetty /Focus Sports/ FSDL]

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Charles Erb
Writer for http://thesoccergoal.com, where I focus on the beautiful game.

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