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Dimitris "Takis" Nikoloudis (; born 26 August 1951) is a Greeks former professional footballer who played as a midfielder and a former manager.
Playing as a holding midfielder, he impressed with his clever game despite his young age. He played with Iraklis for eight consecutive seasons, being one of their best players. However, his career at Iraklis was tarnished when his name was involved in the bribery case. On 28 May 1975, shortly before the semi-final of the Cup between Iraklis and Panathinaikos at Kaftanzoglio Stadium, the former Panathinaikos and Iraklis player, Giorgos Rokidis, following the orders of Antonis Mantzavelakis, an agent of Panathinaikos, visited the team of Iraklis at the hotel, offering money to Nikoloudis and Chaliampalias to have reduced performance in the match. During his Rokidis was holding a bouquet and thus the case was named as the "flower case". The management of Iraklis excluded the two players from the match squad as "disciplinary offense". A judicial process followed, where the guilt of all was documented and at the meeting and vote of the Special Committee of the HFF, Panathinaikos was acquitted due to doubts due to the vote of Giorgos Andrianopoulos, while Rokidis and Chaliampalias were banned for life. For Nikoloudis there was leniency and acquittal with the mitigating factor of his young age. This case caused a rupture in the relations of Nikolouis and the management of the club, with the player being out of favor and not competing in the Cup final, when they won the trophy against Olympiacos. This resulted in his transfer to AEK Athens in the summer of 1976.
The summer of 1979, found the owner of AEK, Loukas Barlos, in a difficult financial situation, trying to maintain the club's great roster at the time. One night Barlos met by chance the president of Olympiacos, Stavros Daifas. The first cited his financial difficulties to the latter. That eventually brought the transfer of Nikoloudis to the red and whites in December 1979 for the fee of 6.5 million Modern drachma.
In the summer of 1982, the return of Zlatko Čajkovski to AEK Athens' bench was combined with the return of Nikoloudis to the club. However, he was a shadow of his former self from his first spell at the club. In June 1983, before the end of the season, he left to Canada to briefly play for Inter-Montréal in the 1983 Canadian Professional Soccer League, but the club folded midway through the season, due to heavy financial losses. Upon his return to Greece, one month later and with AEK having won the Greek Cup, his role at the team was decreased and he eventually left in December. He was transferred to Apollon Kalamarias, where he played for a year. In Apollon he played alongside his brother, Grigoris and the two of them contributed in keeping the team in the first division. Afterwards, Nikoloudis competed with Levadiakos in the second division until the summer of 1986, when he retired as a footballer.
He made his debut with Greece, on April 7, 1971, in the friendly 0–1 defeat to Bulgaria at home, playing a total of 22 times and scoring 4 goals. Captain of the national team for years, he was an integral part of the qualifying team of Alketas Panagoulias. His best moment with the Greece was on September 12, 1979, when in the 26th minute of the match, after his collaboration with Giorgos Delikaris, against Soviet Union, he scored 1-0 and with this as the final result, the team qualified, for the first time in its history, to the final stage of a major international event, the UEFA Euro 1980 in Italy in which it competed in the only match in which the national team got a point, the 0–0 draw with the eventual champions West Germany.
AEK Athens
Olympiacos
Individual
Greece U21
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