51e - Football! (All Around)

 I had regained some of my lost freedom, under the blue skies and the abundant sunlight of the Greek afternoons, to roam the boys’ world, my world, to play football with Kostakis and friends, and when football was impeded by the external factors, other more mundane games. The older we grew the wider the neighbourhood and city had opened their arms wide to. Freedom is a concept impossible to define and even to describe it, that is, to put it unambiguously and unequivocally in words, but the feelings from its conquest are more clear, unique and irrefutable. You seek freedom and when you get some of it you feel it to the extent it was conquered it and in proportion to the effort you made to earn it. From the nearby sandlot, where we became persona non grata from the despised Theologian, we took to the streets with a ball under our arms to more exotic and distant corners of the city: to the large open space on Constantinople Street, on which decades later the council built a school, but in our time usually occupied by children, even youth amateur league teams; to the seafront parks, but where the fear of been chased away threat by groundsmen and even the occasional miserable pensioner, who enjoyed his peace on a bench by the grass; even in PAOK's training  ground in Ano Toumpa, for which we had to cross streams and what was left of the grandma’s shanty town, for a few minutes of football on a pitch of professional standards, regular goalposts and (yes!) grass. Alas, the unprecedented joy lasted only a few minutes, before the groundsman noticed us and chased us out with swearing and shouting that surpassed those of Theologian, as if we were committing sacrilege in a holy place.

We played football wherever there were space and time: in the streets, the parks, the sandlots and construction sites of the city, in the schoolyard despite explicit prohibitions and potential confiscation of anything that resembled a ball, during school trips, where football matches between classes were meticulously planned by self-appointed leaders. Football anywhere, anytime and by any means available: with plastic, leather, tiny rubber balls hidden in our pockets for the school breaks, usually unnoticeable by the keen eyes of Ms. Vanda and Mr. Eugenides and the supervising teachers, who roamed the schoolyard carrying a wooden stick. Even plastic milk bottles after everything else had been confiscated, especially from Ms. Vanda, a spinster who like the Theologian hated children, as much as, one could imagine, football. All these games that lasted from the few minutes of the break between classes, until several hours after school into the dusk and until darkness made the ball invisible, left indelible impressions: for the joy, the carefreeness, the anger and pain -physical and emotional, the antagonism, the bullying. Perhaps our souls are partially formed by the energy born out of invisible forces that develop through friendships, by the integration into a team and a group, any group, by the individual contribution to the ephemeral purpose of winning a game, the camaraderie that is born out of team games, one playing for all, and all for one. Impressions of all kinds: the disappointment from a wretched defeat; the ecstasy from scoring a goal that led to victory; the thrill from pride by the praises I received from our school star-player, Papaeconomou, the greatest football talent in primary school, for my performance in a couple of makeshift games; the humiliation I felt from the school bully and self-appointed captain of the class-team, Deliyiannis, who always had the first and last say in the line-ups, and his scolding to me and vice-captain Goutas (who had selected me despite Deliyiannis’ objections) when I scored an own goal in New Helvetia park (‘Goutas, I told you not to have him in our team!’ he exclaimed followed by swearing); the excitement when I wore a shirt with the number 7 grandma had sewn on its back, in an ‘official’ match with the class in one of our final school trip.

Little by little, the natural boyish enthusiasm and longing for playing the game with friends became a passion for the sport itself. With the end of primary school, the painful onset of adolescence, the neighbourhood friends and schoolmates were dispersed to secondary schools in different parts of the city. Football on Sunday afternoons and holidays in the open spaces that the few remaining sandlots around the city, died down as those were disappearing under the relentless construction of blocks of apartments or parking lots. The sweat on our faces by the heat of the sun, the panting from playing ball, the shouts, the arguments and the fights, the celebrations and contentment or disappointment for nothing, all those memories, precious nevertheless, were pushed further into the depths of memory. Some fleeting, naïve dreams of playing for Aris Salonika, as did Papaeconomou, in the Harilaou stadium, which in the meantime had been turfed, in front of thousands of cheering fans, were quashed at the onset of adolescence and the imperative of education.

Kostakis and I changed from mildly talented ballers into devout fans. Before the game week had even started, we would have rushed to the bet-shops of Koudas, a former PAOK captain, or anyone who served as a ticket agent in the city, or the box office of the stadium, to buy tickets for a derby before they were sold out. And early on Sunday mornings we would walk down Constantinople Street to the Harilaou district to the east outskirts of the city, hours before kick-off to wait for groundsman Solon to opened the gates, to rush in and reserve a good seat amongst the crowds of Aris’ faithful: to Gate 1, home of the ‘Holy Company’ of fans, later to Gate 3, behind the goals with the hot-blooded ‘Ultras’. In less important games, we summoned the courage to jump over the railings that enclosed the premiums stands, to Gate 4, under the concrete roof canopy, where tickets were more expensive, but the views better. The Aris’ crowd, and we were merely two of a multitude its miniscule integral molecules, each equipped with the freedom anonymity and the strength a solid uniform mass of people, a mob others might say, possesses and without qualms, demonstrated our support with gestures, shouts and insults, and other vulgar expressions of emotion: our joy and enthusiasm in victories, our disappointment and bitterness in defeats, our rage after any perceived sense of injustice against the team. Today we would barely imagine ourselves and recognize our manners and behaviour at the stands of the Harilaou stadium then.