my friends, they say much worse things about us.’
‘That’s a little hard to believe,’ said Simon. ‘But what do they say?’
Antonis shook his head as if what anyone from Olympiacos thought could be of no real account. ‘They think that because we’re Athenians we think we’re better than them. That we’re snobs. Which of course we are when it comes to Olympiacos. They call us lagoi – rabbits, because they think we run away from a fight. Which is just wishful thinking on their part. That is no surprise. They’re just a bunch of gavroi .’He smiled. ‘This a kind of very small fish you find in the harbour that eats the shit from all the ships docked there.’
Simon and I exchanged a look of surprise at the level of enmity from a man who otherwise seemed perfectly civilised and urbane. I knew what the big, xenophobic Yorkshireman was thinking just by looking at his face. Since we’d arrived in Athens, he’d said it often enough: ‘Bloody Greeks. They’re their own worst enemies. I might feel sorry for the bastards if they weren’t so fucking bolshie.’
‘Good footballers, though,’ was what Simon actually said now. ‘How many times have they won the Greek League? Thirty-six times, is it? And the Greek Cup twenty-three times? And they’d have won the league this year again, if they hadn’t been docked all those points by the Hellenic Football Federation. Which is how we come to be playing them now, in the play-offs.’
Antonis pulled a face and looked away. ‘You can teach anyone to play football,’ he said simply. ‘Even a malakas from Piraeus. That is why they have to cheat. You might be the favourites for this match but don’t underestimate the capacity of the gavroi for low tricks. Tonight, it won’t just be eleven men you are playing. It will be sixteen, if you include the five match officials. And the crowd, of course; don’t forget the so-called Legend. They’re like another player, and a vicious one. There will be nothing friendly about the place you’re going tonight. And you can forget all your English ideas of the beautiful game. There’s no beautiful game in Greece. There’s no beautiful anything. There’s just – anger.’ He nodded. ‘In Greece it’s the one thing of which we have an unlimited supply.’
16
Whenever you see a football manager pacing up and down his technical area shouting encouragement and making signs at his team like a demented on-course bookmaker it makes for compelling television – the cameras love to see ‘the pressure written on the manager’s face’. In truth, the players shouldn’t even be looking at the manager but at the ball and, above the noise of the crowd, they seldom hear anything but the ref’s whistle, unless you’re Sam Allardyce. Most of the time you patrol your lonely ten yards of space only for the sake of appearances; your suffering shows that you care. Plus, it’s harder to sack a manager who is soaked to the skin, with mud on the knees of his Armani suit, not to mention some gob on his back.
Occupying a technical area in Piraeus is even more intimidating with thirty thousand baying Greeks at your back, and frankly it could be something more lethal than a bit of gob that’s coming your way. Just ask the Greek assistant referee who got hit with a flying chair during the Greek Cup in 2011. Venturing from the dugout at the Karaiskakis on a swelteringly hot night in August, it felt like I was leaving the safety of the walls of Troy to duel with Achilles; not recommended. But at Olympiacos it isn’t just crazy fans you have to watch out for: in 2010, despite winning the game 2–1 following some questionable refereeing decisions, the Olympiacos owner, Evangelos Marinakis, attacked Panathinaikos players Djibril Cissé and Georgios Karagounis at the end of the game.
So after just five minutes of the first half, when Bekim Develi scored from twenty-five yards with a shot that looked like a diagram from an artillery
‘That’s a little hard to believe,’ said Simon. ‘But what do they say?’
Antonis shook his head as if what anyone from Olympiacos thought could be of no real account. ‘They think that because we’re Athenians we think we’re better than them. That we’re snobs. Which of course we are when it comes to Olympiacos. They call us lagoi – rabbits, because they think we run away from a fight. Which is just wishful thinking on their part. That is no surprise. They’re just a bunch of gavroi .’He smiled. ‘This a kind of very small fish you find in the harbour that eats the shit from all the ships docked there.’
Simon and I exchanged a look of surprise at the level of enmity from a man who otherwise seemed perfectly civilised and urbane. I knew what the big, xenophobic Yorkshireman was thinking just by looking at his face. Since we’d arrived in Athens, he’d said it often enough: ‘Bloody Greeks. They’re their own worst enemies. I might feel sorry for the bastards if they weren’t so fucking bolshie.’
‘Good footballers, though,’ was what Simon actually said now. ‘How many times have they won the Greek League? Thirty-six times, is it? And the Greek Cup twenty-three times? And they’d have won the league this year again, if they hadn’t been docked all those points by the Hellenic Football Federation. Which is how we come to be playing them now, in the play-offs.’
Antonis pulled a face and looked away. ‘You can teach anyone to play football,’ he said simply. ‘Even a malakas from Piraeus. That is why they have to cheat. You might be the favourites for this match but don’t underestimate the capacity of the gavroi for low tricks. Tonight, it won’t just be eleven men you are playing. It will be sixteen, if you include the five match officials. And the crowd, of course; don’t forget the so-called Legend. They’re like another player, and a vicious one. There will be nothing friendly about the place you’re going tonight. And you can forget all your English ideas of the beautiful game. There’s no beautiful game in Greece. There’s no beautiful anything. There’s just – anger.’ He nodded. ‘In Greece it’s the one thing of which we have an unlimited supply.’
16
Whenever you see a football manager pacing up and down his technical area shouting encouragement and making signs at his team like a demented on-course bookmaker it makes for compelling television – the cameras love to see ‘the pressure written on the manager’s face’. In truth, the players shouldn’t even be looking at the manager but at the ball and, above the noise of the crowd, they seldom hear anything but the ref’s whistle, unless you’re Sam Allardyce. Most of the time you patrol your lonely ten yards of space only for the sake of appearances; your suffering shows that you care. Plus, it’s harder to sack a manager who is soaked to the skin, with mud on the knees of his Armani suit, not to mention some gob on his back.
Occupying a technical area in Piraeus is even more intimidating with thirty thousand baying Greeks at your back, and frankly it could be something more lethal than a bit of gob that’s coming your way. Just ask the Greek assistant referee who got hit with a flying chair during the Greek Cup in 2011. Venturing from the dugout at the Karaiskakis on a swelteringly hot night in August, it felt like I was leaving the safety of the walls of Troy to duel with Achilles; not recommended. But at Olympiacos it isn’t just crazy fans you have to watch out for: in 2010, despite winning the game 2–1 following some questionable refereeing decisions, the Olympiacos owner, Evangelos Marinakis, attacked Panathinaikos players Djibril Cissé and Georgios Karagounis at the end of the game.
So after just five minutes of the first half, when Bekim Develi scored from twenty-five yards with a shot that looked like a diagram from an artillery
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