51b - Football! (From the Stands)

With Father, we did go twice, maybe thrice, to watch matches in football grounds proper. On the first occasion, I barely remember, was at an evening game under the floodlights of Thessaloniki’s Municipal Stadium, the so called ‘Kaftanzoglio Stadium’, named after a great Thessalonian architect of the 19^th century. It was also the home ground of the third, in terms of popularity team of our city, Hercules FC. I never understood why such a lesser club deserved such a large capacity, modern stadium. Flanked by Father and Grandfather, sitting on one of the low tiers of the crowded stands, we watched Hercules playing against Aris Salonica FC, in one of the three local derbies of the Greek top division calendar. I was too young a boy at that time to fully comprehend what was happening on the pitch and not yet a favourite team to support, and I remained indifferent as the game was evolving and rather unstirred by goals scored and the result. In football, of course, emotions can run high amongst fans that understand and are initiated to its rules, rituals and mysteries. I was more impressed by the modern stadium, the blinding floodlights, the turf glowing under those bright lights, the shadows of the fans crammed on the stands, the smell of tobacco, the chill of the winter evening pleasantly moderated by people squeezed next to each other, who seemed to care much more than me with what was happening on the pitch.

Granpda was also a team sports and, therefore, football fan. From a young age, since his Melnikian family resettled as refugees in Thessaloniki, after the Bucharest agreement in 1913, he became a fan of Aris Salonica, since its founding as a club a year later. Football, amongst the refugee folk that poured into the city from Asia Minor and the Balkans somehow dispelled the fog of misery; it became an escape from the gray daily routine of workers like him, lifted the mood and made the arrival of Monday mornings more tolerable. Grandpa might have also played some football in his youth, although I could find no evidence of such thig. But in older age he joined the board of an amateur local sports club, MENT, and frequented its nominated café to discuss with friends and members, beside the administration and football matters, the trepidations of life and current affairs issues from the Athenian political circus. One of the last images my memory retained of grandpa, was in the night before he was taken back to the psychiatric clinic, where he finally died. He was in his short red gown, sitting in an armchair of our living room, watching silently a televised match from the 1974 World Cup. It was a rare instant when three generations of men, all sharing the same passion for football. It also serves as a consolation to know that something we have loved since we were boys, it will be there to excite us until close to our end.

I watched the first game of my favourite team ever since, Aris Salonica, in its still unturfed home ground, rather euphemistically branded as ‘stadium’, in the Harilaou district, then still at the eastern outskirts of the city. It was a game in a warm sunny autumn Sunday afternoon, at the beginning of another football season, indelibly etched in memory. The atmosphere in the ground was lively and colourful, filled with anticipation and excitement. It was far surpassing any other live event I had experienced before. The hubbub from the Aris’ fans pouring into the stands from the just opened gates and scattered like ants on the stands, the aroma of tobacco from the almost exclusively male crowd, smokers in its majority, the announcements from the loudspeakers, two black and yellow flags waving on either side of the board that displayed the scoreline under the also in of a large mechanical clock -also in yellow and black colours. Laughter and jokes and banter, a cheerful mood all around us: soon the match would start and what a better something could have happened for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon in the lives of working people!

Vendors sold orangeades and lemonades of the ‘Florina-Sour Water’ brand from a tank of water filled with ice cubes for the thirsty fans, others shelled pumpkin and sunflower seeds to calm nerves from usherette trays. Shouts of ‘Donuts, Lads, Donuts!’ from a vendor in his field day stood out. With admirable agility between the crowded rows cramped shoulders and legs, he moved up and down the stands to serve his clientele. And if a customer's seat was inaccessible, buying and selling took place from a distance: by throwing the merchandise to the seller, coins in the opposite direction, and in extreme cases, hand-to-hand along and across the tiered rows. Father gave me some change to buy a “Florina-Sour Water” orangeade from one of the ice-filled tanks in corner of our stand, the only available brand of refreshments, advertised several times through the loudspeakers. It was sold in small spherical plastic bottles and tasted anything but sour. That taste of ‘Florina-Sour Water’ orangeade I associated as a boy with watching Aris playing in its home ground.

About half an hour before kick-off, a man dragging something like a watering tank sprayed water on the dry pitch surface, which would be considered unplayable by today’s standards. This was followed by the principal and lifelong groundsman and gatekeeper, a wretched individual named Solon, whose name associated with a chant from fans waiting to enter the ground: "Solon, Solon open the gates, don't keep them shut// let us get in before there is trouble and fuss" -chant that I would also sing later. Pushing a cart full of lime, he enhanced the white lines of the pitch: its perimeter, the circles and semicircles, the quarter-circles by the corner flags, the dot at the penalty spot. The enthusiasm and expectations of the crowd, mine amongst them, was intensifying by each moment passing of those preparations.  

It peaked a few minutes before kick-off, when the advertisements from the loudspeakers were suddenly interrupted to present the lineups. The announcement of each surname player of the ‘away’ team, Byzas of Megara, was accompanied by some incongruous booing, but the surnames of the eleven staring players of Aris were followed by intense cheers: Chri-sti-des! ('Oleee!'), Pal-las! …, Nal-ban-dis... Se-mer-tzis..., Spy-ri-don..., Lou-ka-nides..., Rapto-poulos..., Kera-mi-das..., A-le-xia-des... Sy-ro-pou-los! And... Konstantin-ti-ni-des! (Oleee!). The lineup, like many other lineups and players of my favourite team since then, I found easier to memorize than poems or religious hymns at school, and were rather miraculously retained in memory, given their insignificance in life matters. Each surname was pronounced with emphasis and pomp, with an authority that resonated with the cheers; it acquired a special weight and importance, it gave prestige to a group of brave warriors preparing for a grand battle on an unforgivingly hard pitch. Soon, the unsmiling faces in the football cards I used to collect, with the coarse and sometimes ugly features, rushed out of a tunnel through intense applause. The battling cry of thousand in unison: ‘A-ris!’, ‘A-ris!’ pierced the air and the surrounding areas. I felt awkward at the chants, their rhythm and intensity, possibly out of my inherent timidity; a young child among wild ecstatic men who felt like home. And my hair stood on the back the neck from that vague excitement that overwhelms fans at the beginning of a match, and a shiver ran through my spine, probably out of latent pride for a team that I have supported ever since. The crowd of thousands merged into a single soul and voice, in unison behind the eleven warriors in the yellow and black kit. It was fully anticipated, that day like every Sunday, each one of them would give body and soul, would shed sweat and perhaps blood, for a rather ephemeral aim of a victory on the pitch, for that ‘black-and-yellow shirt’, for some abstract, and many would argue pointless, ideals, like winning the league or a cup at the end of a season long journey -underdogs against the powerhouses of Athenian clubs. I felt a sense of belonging in that multitude of strangers, united by those abstract aims and ideals and, for that matter, united in a yearning for victory. The team real victory would be an own fictitious victory. It was something of no substance and would not materialistically affect lives in the slightest, but it would temporarily unleash, for better or worse, a spectrum of emotions, necessary intangible constituents of a human life worth living. I became one with this crowd and group, an entity seemingly superior and more powerful, standing above the insignificant individual self. It was perhaps not so much the case for self-centred personalities or big egos, like Father, to be identified with any undifferentiated mass of common people.

Aris’ starting eleven, after they emerged from the tunnel, lined up in two rows for a photo shoot. The front row of players squatted, the back row players stood behind the first row with their arms folded, goalkeeper Christidis, the captain in an all-black kit, was the first standing from the left. The game began with the ref blowing his whistle through a crescendo of cheers and chants. By this time round I obtained a better understanding of the game: of its rules, the throw-ins, the corner and free kicks, even the offsides. The fans, biased of course, disputed most referee decisions against the team, apart from some blatantly obvious calls, and their protestations were accompanied by boos and insults. The linesmen, running back and forth along the byline and close to the well-fenced stands, were enduring a similar verbal abuse each time they raised the flag for any debatable call against the home team, yet they remained admirably indifferent to the insults directed at them from arm’s length behind their backs. They did not turn heads even to face on occasions torrent of abuse, which, I thought, would have been a natural human reaction. How could they put up with some extreme foul language and swearing? How could they remain undisturbed and fearless, when some of the most fanatics were climbing the tall guardrails and gesticulating menacingly towards them?

For long periods during the match, I ignored Aris’ attacking attempts, and watched with admiration my idol: goalkeeper Christides, who also happened to be the national team goalie. As Aris was having most of the possession and the initiative in the game, he habitually left his penalty area, ventured close the centre circle and watched the game with his arms folded - like another spectator. He displayed a confidence, an arrogance even, our haughty and imposing captain in his all-black outfit. Shouldn’t he have stood closer to his goalposts and protect them, just in case, despite his scorn and show some more respect to the visitors, I wondered.

Then we had the goals. A sudden loud shout of "Gooaaal!", which reached new heights on the decibel scale, took me aback and I shuddered. I tried to stand tall, on my toes, a short stature amongst animated bodies of grown-ups in a pandemonium of celebrations, so that I can discern what had happened -identify the goal scorer at least. The stadium and Harilaou district must have thundered. A hard earned and long coveted victory was coming our way. The stand, filled with happy smiling faces, stood erect from their seats a few minutes before the end, throwing their Styrofoam cushions to the skies. The noise from the stands, a mixture of cheers, bravos and laughter, expressed happiness, bliss. The scoreboard, updated by the hands of a willing volunteer, showed the wanted result: Aris 2 – Byzas 1. After the final whistle, Aris’ players got together, arranged themselves in a line and raised their arms to all four sides of the field in succession to greet their fans, in a storm of applause and bravos’ and ‘well done, guys!’ If Aris won, his fans also won. With the joy of the football victory painted on faces, a joy of a magnitude that is scientifically inexplicable, they left the ground en masse, many with clenched fists and raised arms. A week of work in offices and factories that had been forgotten for a couple of hours, would start again with the higher morale. A therapeutic effect of the victory of one’s favourite club was brough about.

As soon as Father began to work standard office hours as an employee of the state telecom company, he devoted weekday and Sunday afternoons, strictly and exclusively his rest and indolence and to dampened worries around work; the hours of siesta after lunch gained unwavering importance and were given inviolable priority in life. Despite a conscious distancing from football stadiums and the amorphous mass of dedicated fans, which he considered common and rough and uneducated, he regularly reminded family and friends of his short amateur tenure and, for that matter, with a dose of pride: "I had talent in two things: mathematics and football!", he used to say. And he had small talks with neighbours and friends, over Sunday's matches and around football matters in general, and rarely missed filling the weekly betting slip with football predictions -motivated mostly by a hope of winning millions. Needs, priorities, habits change, but there is always a residue remains at older age: an interest that motivates us to watch one match and the next, to try and rationally over-analyse, normally without coherence and depth and purpose, to discuss it endlessly with friends, as if it were about a great love, to let it affect us with joy and happiness, disappointments and bitterness, perhaps more vividly and intensely than other topics. As a boy, he did not stand in my way to enjoy my football, but neither did he fervently encourage me to engage overjealously in playing or watching it. Football, he advised me, should be treated as entertainment, as two strictly entrenched carefree hours for the relief from main duties-nothing more; not to be taken as seriously as with some ardent fans and brainless fanatics that had ‘no other interest and purpose in life’, and usually plentiful of leisure time at their disposal. As such, it is not worth of great disappointments and sorrow; there are other sources to draw joy and optimism from. Above all, it should by no means divert my focus from school and education -my main duty as a child. Any slim chance of joining a club’s academy with the even more unlikely prospect of making a living from football had been ruled out from early on, even though, as I believed, I possessed some talent comparable to Father’s, which he often liked to speak to people about. Yet, like every boy, I could not help but keep dreaming that one day I might be playing behind the guardrails, fully kitted, on a pitch and in a team proper, with people watching and applauding.  

There were consolations against the back drop of parental restrictions for the sake of studying and obtaining a decent education and climbing the social ladder. In Thessaloniki’s commercial centre for general shopping, with Mother and less often with Father, the basement of the "Kantrantzos SPORT" department store in Tsimiski Street always offered some of the treats I was hoping for. I was drawn to that basement by the smell of leather and plastic emanating from a huge basket in the middle full of balls: for football, for basketball, for volleyball, that I might choose for my holidays or because a previous ball had been stolen or destroyed in street games with school and neighbour friends. My family ensured that I would always be in possession of a ball, in sound condition, to take and kick and play in courtyards, in streets and sandlots. And at the onset of childhood proper, little Costas, Costakis, entered my life! The neighborhood kid, the best friend, the ardent football fan, a talented player of the game at school -third most skillful player in our elementary school by the mutual consent, a fan of the same club –Aris of Salonica and its top scorer, Alexiades, admirer of the Brazilian national team and Pelé. Filip met Nathaniel, one might have said. My passion for football found an eager partner in Costakis: to play in the streets, in the small yard of his grandparents, the school yard and the parks, in the anticipation of Sunday league games and world cups, in endless chats about our beloved team and favourite players. And for years we became regulars of the stands of the Harilaou and the other two major stadia of our hometown.

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