David Panka’s career took a special turn last year. The 22-year-old wing attacker left the Netherlands somewhat through the back door in the summer of 2020, but eventually ended up with the Greek superpower Panathinaikos via Poland and the United States. Panka has already trained with the main squad several times in the first half of the season and hopes to be able to make his debut for the twenty-time champion of Greece after the winter as soon as possible.
By Chris Meijer
It is a somewhat strange sensation for Panka. Nearly everywhere he announces that he is a Panathinaikos player near his apartment in Athens, the doors fly open for him. Free dinners, taxi drivers who take him for free. “You get extra privileges. People are really in love with the club, you can tell in the way they treat you,” says Panka. “Conversely, it is less friendly if you meet someone who is a fan of Olympiacos or AEK Athens. I haven’t really experienced that yet, because I live in Panathinaikos area. It feels a bit like a holiday every day, I live close to the sea.”
Panka owes it to his former agent that he now plays for Panathinaikos. He threw a ball at a Panathinaikos scout, asking if Panka might not be an interesting player for them. “They were able to view everything through WyScout. Apparently that was liked. Yes, I was happy with that”, says Panka with a smile. He signed a two-year contract with Panathinaikos. “I didn’t necessarily come for the second or the first team. My resume was not sufficient to match the former, which is quite understandable. I still had to prove myself and I did that during the preparation.”
Partly because of this, Panka already trained several times in the first half of the season with the first team of Panathinaikos – currently the number four in the Greek Super League. “It went great, the last period I also joined the first. So we’re going in the right direction. There are also other Dutch players, guys with a good resume. Bart Schenkeveld and Yassin Ayoub, Ramon Pascal Lundqvist has played for PSV, NAC Breda and FC Groningen in the past. Ayoub is a good guy, who helps me at first with all kinds of things. When you see where the players have played, those are the best leagues. It’s nice to be able to measure yourself against them. You play with very intelligent players, so it’s a different level. But I feel that my qualities come out better the higher I play. So I didn’t really have a problem with it, but of course you have to shift a few gears.”
It was intended that Panka would make his first minutes on the Greek fields in the second team of Panathinakos, which plays at the second level. “You can compare it with Ajax and PSV, who also have their U23 team at the second level. The plan was to play two or three games there and see if I was better than the rest. That competition only started at the beginning of November,” he explains. At the same time, Panka has now returned to the Netherlands in a cast to spend the Christmas holidays at home, as he broke his tibia a month and a half ago and is therefore probably out of circulation until February.
“We have to see how it goes after that. Many players in my position will potentially leave Panathinaikos next summer. So they are testing if I can be their replacement. I hope the very best.” Should Panka succeed in breaking through into the Panathinakos first team, it will be a reward for his persistence. He had to leave Vitesse’s youth academy at the age of fourteen due to mononucleosis and then stopped playing football for a year and a half. He then fought his way back to professional football via the amateurs of Spakenburg and Roda’46. In the Netherlands, however, he did not get any further than the promise teams of SC Cambuur and RKC Waalwijk.
Panka in the shirt of Miedz Legnica, where he spent the first half of last season.
“I needed the step abroad. I have not really broken through in the Netherlands and then the options are not really wide. In the Netherlands I could have played in a U23 team at most, due to lack of minutes. I was of the age to break through somewhere in the first team. Look, I’ve had enough opportunities in the Netherlands. That didn’t work out, partly because of bad luck and partly because I screwed up myself. Not because of a lack of quality, but because I made bad choices,” he is guilty. The step to Poland – his mother’s homeland – was an obvious one. And in fact the step to Miedz Legnica, since the second-level club comes from the same city as his mother. His six months in southwestern Poland turned out to be a period of extremes.
“From a sporting point of view it was beautiful, only in terms of peripheral matters it was terrible. Promises were not kept, I was treated quite disrespectfully there. That is why I also left, because I felt that at a certain point it was no longer acceptable.” With twelve appearances for Miedz Legnica to his name, Panka decided a year ago to look for a new club. He completed an internship with Korona Kielce (“that was more to watch and keep fit, as they played at the same level and that was not the step I wanted to make”) and got offers from the Ekstraklasa, the highest level of Polish football. “I just wanted to make a big step and I thought the fastest way to do this was through the MLS. In retrospect, that was the wrong choice.”
Panka chose to exchange Poland for an American adventure, at Sporting Kansas City. He looks back on the six months he spent in the United States with mixed feelings. “It is a dream for many people to live in America. Life there is different, very different. The people are a lot friendlier and more sociable. I had a great time there, you have restaurants and shops there that we don’t have here. So in that respect it was a beautiful life experience. In Kansas City you have the national training center, so I met a lot of great athletes there. For example, the national basketball and football teams passed by there every now and then,” Panka points out about the positive aspects. In terms of football, however, he calls his time at Sporting Kansas City ‘a little disappointing’.
“I was injured in the first period and everything took a long time to arrange my visa, so I never really got off the starting blocks and I couldn’t really show myself in the first team. They wanted me to slowly build up to the second (which comes out at the second tier of American football, in the USL Championship, ed.) after my difficult start, but I saw it differently. I wanted to make minutes, preferably at the first. Towards the summer I started to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to take a step, as I would be left with nothing if I finished the season there.” So the options were weighed up and finally Panathinaikos offered the opportunity to return to Europe. “I was happy with that, yes.”
“I wanted to go to a club that competes for something, for example European football. They have made it clear from the first moment that they are a top club, that they want to stay that way and that they want to radiate. So the workouts are a bit more intense, everything has to be perfect, tight and good. I like being in such an environment”, Panka nods. In that environment, he hopes to make his debut in the first team of Panathinaikos after the winter break. “First I have to make sure that I can train with the first. But it can go fast if you run for two or three good weeks. I was doing well, but I can’t say how fast I could make my debut.”