51a - Football! (On the Telly)

There are passions, which, after taking hold in childhood, evolve into an unquenchable devotion, in many ways pointless, that can last for as long as we have sense of space and time and retain some of our faculties, often to the very end. Football and chess were two of them for me, even though I did not manage to excel in either.

Father in his youth must have had this little fire in him which he tried to conceal -from me at least: a fire for playing football, the team sport of his time, the “beautiful game”, already popular in his city, the country and the world. Although, throughout his adult life, only on occasions did he appear to display a keen interest as a spectator-fan, as a boy and student he often played the game –in the streets and the sandlots of a rapidly expanding city landscape. This is what some of photos from the 1950’s evidenced, in which he posed in the football kit of his university team, over a skinny torso and rather stubby legs -a body cut for playing football, one might have said.

Before the purchase of our first TV set, on Sundays, when Father took his vital, couple of hours nap, I used to crouch in a corner of my room listening to the small radio and being enthralled by a full of drama broadcast from the hoarse and emblematic voice of Yannis Logothetis -the main state radio football sportscaster. How could a theology graduate manage to deliver live football commentaries with such eloquence and fervour and fluency, with no pauses, no errors, no faltering, in incredible detail and a tempo commensurate with the speed of passing the ball from one player to another? Concurrently with the ritual of Sunday afternoon broadcast, I kept notes of the scorelines on a notepad and had Father informed of those when he woke up. We would then check the results against the betting slips with his football predictions. When I grew up, I indulged in the same betting with some of my pocket money, with bets that rarely paid off.

Only a few Sundays that I remember, Father and I went to the stadium to watch our favourite team; a few because he would rarely sacrifice his afternoon siesta for a sub-standard sports event, still played amateurishly on dry unturfed grounds. Yet, football in all forms, either playing it or listening to or watching it, was my main entertainment of Sunday winter afternoons throughout childhood. It was entertainment for the masses, the common folk as they say, a game mainly embraced by the lower classes and my class, whilst considered déclassé and common by the elites. In a family, which was standing slight above the lower working strata of the city, my Sunday afternoon football fun was part of a leisurely routine that included a three-course meal of Greek salad, roast beef and galaktoboureko at Nionios' restaurant or a take-away from the legendary burger grill of Takis Kalousis; unforgettable flavours that seemed to go hand in hand with the anticipation of the afternoon events and audio broadcast that followed, before another week of routine at school or work began.

Then, in 1970, Father purchased out first TV! A magical cube, a box of wonders, the ‘mad-box’ as grandma called it. It was of a certain Grundig brand with a black and white display (as color television in Greece took a few more years before it was introduced) and hard-to-adjust controls, by pressing buttons or rotating switches in two columns. There were only two state channels then, but interruptions for ‘technical’ or other reasons in the broadcast were frequent and the tuning and control our TV awkward. It was placed centrally on the ad-hoc shelf of the bookcase, across the sofa and a pair of assorted armchairs in our long and narrow sitting-room. Since its purchase, we invariably watched the still rare live broadcasts of European and world football. The prelude with the Eurovision anthem always caused a stir in me, and raised the levels of anticipation and excitement. It was followed by the pulsating and enchanting commentary of the peerless sports commentator Yiannis Diakoyiannis, whose special voice tone caused a pleasant resonance to the senses and mind and added color to the action projected to the black-and-white screen from a stadium of an exotic European metropolis. Diakoyiannis’ skilfully interposed pauses, when only the noise and the chants from the crowd in the stands could be heard in the background, prepared us for his next comment or punchline: about the A or B footballer or coach, the team, the country, an associated historical event, criticism on tactics and techniques, as well as the occasional interjection of a political innuendo. His commentary always managed to enthral and thrill despite the primitive technology by today's standards. Yiannis Diakoyiannis was listened by my generation of football fans with reverence, no matter how uneventful the unfolding spectacle might have been, and became an icon of my childhood.  

More often, on Sunday evenings, our interest focused on the late sports program aptly name "Sports Sunday", which Diakoyiannis also presented alternatively with his rather less talented associate Fountoukidis. The program included some crudely edited clips from the artless and unspectacular matches of the day in Greek league, so often infested by time wasting, feign injuries, and was on occasions interrupted by the more interesting (for the boy fans or fanatics, at least) fights on and off the pitch, between players, coaches, officials and sometimes fans, and invariably followed by vehement protestations and expressions of indignation from the defeated team and bitter public comments from club officials. Especially, after the major local derbies in Athens or Thessaloniki, these matches were frequently culminated in violent incidents in and around the grounds. I realized from early on that in Greek football rarely a defeat was considered fair by the supporters of the defeated team, and based on merit and the ability of the opposition, and always left a bitter taste with insinuations of cheating and referee bias. On the other hand, the English league matches I watched videotaped from the muddy and sometimes snowy grounds on Saturday afternoons captivated me as much as those of my local team, which I supported as a child. But I noticed the contrast: in England, winners and losers shook hands despite the brutal tackles and fouls or the refereeing mistakes. I found out later that this style of competing had a name: ‘fair play’.