The Gymnastics Club «Ergotelis» Heraklion Crete (), commonly known simply as Ergotelis (), is a Greek professional football club, department of the multi-sport club Gymnastics Club Ergotelis, which is based in Heraklion, Crete. It is the club's oldest and most successful department, officially established in 1929 and named after the famous ancient Cretan expatriate Olympic runner Ergoteles of Himera. The club currently competes in the Super League 2, the second tier of the Greek football league system, and hosts its home games at the Pankritio Stadium, the city's largest and most modern sports venue.
Ergotelis is one of the two Heraklion-based football clubs to have competed in the Greek Super League, the country's top-level football competition, having made a total of 9 appearances during 2004–2015. The club's best finish in the competition is 7th place during the 2013–14 season. It has also won the Beta Ethniki (second tier of the Greek football league system) once, in 2006, as well as the Greek Football Amateur Cup in 1983. Its traditional colors are yellow and black.
Despite finishing at 9th place during the 2021-22 Super League Greece 2, they were discharged from the professional championship, resulting in a two-level demotion to the local top-level amateur championship, FCA Heraklion A1.
History
Early years
Ergotelis was established as an amateur club of Cretan footballers in 1929 by prominent Heraklion citizens, mainly refugees from Asia Minor. The club's foundation, as well as its first ever recorded game, a friendly 4–0 win against local side Leon () held at Chandax () stadium on 4 August 1929, was reported onto local newspaper 'Eleythera Skepsis' () on Wednesday, 7 August 1929. Since its early days, Ergotelis showed the progressive ideals of its founders, being one of the first sports clubs in Greece to allow women into its sporting divisions, as well as its board of directors. The club temporarily shut down in 1935, following the involvement of its leading executives in political movements of the time. Ergotelis was re-established in 1937, developing a remarkable athletics department along with a strong football team, that went on to place 1st in the 1940 Heraklion Football Clubs Association Championship, which was never finished due to World War II.
After the war, the club emerged as the most powerful competitor to regular Heraklion Football Clubs Association champions OFI, shaping up a new football and social rivalry in local sport. Ergotelis eventually gained its own football ground in 1946, the Ergotelis Stadium (also known as Martinengo Stadium, after the Martinengo Bastion), located on the Venetian Era walls surrounding the city's center, and would mostly play in Heraklion's local championship and Greece's national Second Division, after the latter was founded in the early 1960s. Ergotelis actually came close to achieve a historic promotion to the First Division during the very first Beta Ethniki season held in 1960, finishing 3rd in the Southern Group, just 4 points behind Group Champions Atromitos Piraeus. The club was demoted to the newly established Gamma Ethniki in 1964−65 after finishing 9th in Group 2, and subsequently won the Group 1 Gamma Ethniki championship in 1966, the club's first ever national honour, to top off instant re-promotion to the Beta Ethniki.
Junta years, Theodorakis concert and repercussions (1966–1974)