The 1950s had only few good times in store for AEK. In 1951, shortly after the historical 2-2 against Austria Wien, Beby suddenly left Greece, whereas Kleanthis Maropoulos and Michalis Delavinias, the last two great players from the pre-war team, retired from action.
Delavinias was AEK's goalkeeper in the lost 1953 Cup final (3-2 defeat to Olympiacos), where Enosis brought in some of the players who were to make history in the following years, such as Ilias Papageorgiou and Andreas Stamatiadis. It took three years, the year was 1956, when AEK left victorious following a win at the same pitch against the same opponent in the same competition. The goals of Chaniotis and Kanakis crowned AEK as Cup winner against the absolute master of that time, Olympiacos.
Serafidis, Paragios, Karakatsanis, Tsangaris, Zografos, Poulis, Emmanouilidis, Kanakis, Chaniotis, Stamatiadis, and Kourtidis were the eleven players behind this triumph.
Kostas Nestoridis was watching from the tiers. He had already come to our side from Panionios "under a two-year ban" (since his club had not consented to his transfer), but he would boost AEK's performance in official matches as of the 1957-58 season. Once he properly joined the team, AEK leveled up. The 1958 and 1959 titles were lost to minor details, Nea Filadelfia was already attracting fans and this stadium (with a maximum capacity of 15,000 following the construction of two tiers during 1945-55) had to grow significantly.