Hellas futebol

[Faliro]

The Greek left traditionally don't care about appearances. Most Greeks are leftist or believe themselves to be.

Athens has some of the finest street graffiti anywhere on earth, however it is also has tons  and tons of shitty vandalism graffiti that makes the place look.. rough.. really rough.

Here is some of the better stuff..

[H]

I love graffitis when done right, like you've shown above, but I think there should be prison sentences for people just "tagging" the streets, it's pure vandalism. Our lovely Lisbon is ruined as well on many places because of these wannabe criminals who think they're tough and that they earn street cred by spraying their shitty nicknames on a wall. They have no respect, they will even tag our beautiful tiles and historic statues from Camões, Marquês de Pombal or Fernando Pessoa, if they can.

If ever catched one of these filthy punks tagging my home, I would bash their fucking teeth in and bring him down to the police station myself.

[Festivus]

As I had said before, pretty much everyone I'm talked to who has visited Greece has loved it, but disliked or even hated Athens. I guess the griffitti doesn't help much either.

[Faliro]

^^ They need me to take them round and show them the cool places.  I would never recommend a friend to discover Athens on his/her own. Too much could go wrong. 

Also I agree with H, I would seriously damage anyone doing that to my place. I used to do some Graffito myself - quite big pieces, but never tagging other people's homes and businesses.

Greeks graffiti anything.

[Faliro]

Tomorrow Makarian announces his squad for the quals.

I expect a shit squad.

[Festivus]

I'm starting to think Greeks are a more rebellious and aggressive version of the Portuguese.

[HJDK]

I'm starting to think Greeks are a more rebellious and aggressive version of the Portuguese.

Totally.

[Faliro]

I'm starting to think Greeks are a more rebellious and aggressive version of the Portuguese.

Far more aggressive.

[H]

I'm starting to think Greeks are a more rebellious and aggressive version of the Portuguese.

Far more aggressive.

Try saying that Portugal is a province from Spain and you'll see if the Portuguese are less aggressive.

[Faliro]

So Makarian has selected the Greek squad or 'walking dead' as I like to call them, for the make or break against Hungary. Here they are and my ratings for any agents out there. The heat map indicates how good the player is also.

Goalkeepers:

Karnezis (Udinese) 6.5/10 Fairly competent keeper. Haven't monitored him but he has made one or two mistakes in the past in big games.
Kapino (Mainz 05) 4/10 Mistake prone.
Vellidis (Giannina) 6/10 Fairly good.

Defence:

Torosidis (Roma) 7.5/10 Lock in for RB.
K. Papadopoulos (Leverkusen) 8.5/10. Best player Greece has produced imo.
Manolas (Roma) 8/10. Superior CB and one of the fastest in the game.
Xolebas (Roma)7.5/10 Attack minded LB. Clever and quick. Bit of a temper.
Bakakis (AEK) ? Have not watched this player enough to have an opinion.
Siovas (OSFP) 5/10 Once a towering dominant figure. Since the injuries, a shadow of who he once was.
Papastathopoulos (Dortmund) 6.5/10. Quality CB, however very card happy.
Moras (Verona) 5.5/10 Not a bad CB, not excellent.
Stafilidis (Fulham) 5.5/10 Attack minded LB playing for a very poor quality side, still young but will probably be a good player one day.

Midfielders:

Tachtsidis (Verona) 5/10  Slow but very good passer - also very strong.
Katsouranis (Atromitos) 2/10 Slow, card happy and generally past it.  A liability of the first order.
Fortunis (OSFP) 5/10 Lightweight creative midfield player.
Lagos (PAO) 5/10 Average DM.
Samaris (Benfica) 7/10 Have only seen 3-4 games of Benfica this season. He should be a lock in at DM.
Xristodoulopoulos (Udinese) 5/10 Mediocre attacking left winger.
Fetfatzidis (Chievo) 8/10 Perhaps the best attacking player Greece currently has.
Gianniotas (Asteras) 7.5/10 Superior right winger, very happy he was called up.
Kone (Udinese) 5/10 Dislike this player. Has some ability I guess, but has many poor games and is very card happy.

Forwards:

Mitroglou (OSFP) 7/10 What can be said about this player which has not already been said?  On his day a quality CF. On his day..
Karelis (PAO) 5/10 Beefcake attacking mid/striker. 1 good game for every 3 bad.
Athanasiadis (PAOK) 4/10 Yet to do anything of any significance for the NT, but keeps getting chances.

This is not a squad that will inspire however, if I were in charge..

............................Karnezis..............................

Toro.............Sokratis........Manolis...............Xolebas

...............K. Paps.....................Samaris................

Gianniotas................Fetfa......................Karelis..

..........................Mitroglou..................................

[Faliro]

OFI announce that they have left the Super League. Like AEK, Aris and other clubs that went bankrupt, they will be sent to the amateur 3rd division. They will then look for an investor.

They were due to play PAS Giannina in 1 hour.  That makes it two teams that have not made it to the end.. Niki Volos the other..

In other news, Angelos Charisteas of Euro 2004 fame is doing his military service. it was delayed because he was a footballer...

[H]

Didn't know Greece had mandatory military service, that's so odd!!

The only other country I know that has military service is Austria, which is also weird, but in Austria I think you can do public service instead of military service, if you wish to.

Can you talk a bit of why do you have conscription in Greece? Does it have anything to do with your neighbours (mainly Turkey and the whole Cyprus issue)?

[Faliro]

Greece has conscription due to the immediate and vast threat of Turkey, which does not recognise Greece's sea borders and questions the sovereignty of many Greek islands. Greece spends far more on weapons than most other EU nations because of this constant threat and has military conscription of all available males including priests.

Turkey regularly violates Greek airspace with armed jets and sails military frigates into Greek waters without permission.

As a result Greece and Turkey have come close to war on various occasions and Greece realises - the UK, Germany, Italy etc would not necessarily back Greece if it was invaded by Turkey. 

Turkey's army is the second biggest in NATO - only the USA has a bigger army. Also Turkey is run by a neo ottomanist expansionist group of leaders who which to expand Turkey out into its former domains.

=====================================================

OFI players and coach came on the pitch to say goodbye..



















PAS players looking on..

[H]

Greece has conscription due to the immediate and vast threat of Turkey, which does not recognise Greece's sea borders and questions the sovereignty of many Greek islands. Greece spends far more on weapons than most other EU nations because of this constant threat and has military conscription of all available males including priests.

Turkey regularly violates Greek airspace with armed jets and sails military frigates into Greek waters without permission.

As a result Greece and Turkey have come close to war on various occasions and Greece realises - the UK, Germany, Italy etc would not necessarily back Greece if it was invaded by Turkey. 

Turkey's army is the second biggest in NATO - only the USA has a bigger army. Also Turkey is run by a neo ottomanist expansionist group of leaders who which to expand Turkey out into its former domains.

Thanks for explaining that, exactly what I thought.

Turkey seems like an extremely unfriendly neighbor. I, as a Portuguese, have nothing against them, never even been there althought there's curiosity. In any case, looking at the tense relations between Turkey and Greece, Armenia and even with some muslim sects, an outsider gets a suspicious feeling coming from there, and I'm not even mentioning the whole trouble in the Balkans on the first half of the XX century. The people that are currently in power are indeed quite incovenient, to say the least.

This is probably a cliché question to ask and maybe even too sensitive to do so to a Greek person, but if I'm allowed to ask you and if you want to answer, can you tell me your thoughts on Hagia Sophia? I mean, concerning its past, current situation and Future? I only ask this because (I think I said this already on another thread) this is the kind of stuff we don't read in the books, it's in the common people's mind, not in the scholar ones.

PS: If you feel like it, you can take this last question as a metaphor for the general relation between Greece and Turkey.

[Faliro]

The subject of the Hagia Sofia or Santa Sofia as it was known is purposefully confused by nationalists and those who have an exceptionally poor understanding of history.

I have read as much as can on the subject, and having a grandfather who spent some of his childhood is Istanbul (Constantinople) I feel I can give you the brutal reality of this curious subject.

Firstly, one has to understand the fall of Constantinople in basic and honest terms. Something rarely ever attempted on either side.

By the time Constantinople fell, 1453, the city was already mostly abandoned due do massive depopulation caused by the sacking of the city by crusaders and the destruction and capture of 90% of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottomans. The city was so abandoned that there were fields where houses and buildings once stood within the actual walls - rather than just pure city as it once was. Literally towns existed within the walls with farming and countryside in between.. a truly apocalyptic vision. The defending force was only about 7000..an unbelievably small number.. the Ottomans had around 150,000 troops surrounding the city  give or take (with many Christian mercenaries helping.. ).. It was a foregone conclusion. So therefore, to all the Greeks who claim it was a stunning city, the greatest city on earth, the original 'Poli' - it was, but this was not the city the Ottomans captured, rather the city the Crusaders sinfully looted 200 years prior. So therefore, many Greeks are wrong when they state the magnificent city fell. It was a mostly a beautiful and awe inspiring semi abandoned city with most of the prior residents having fled to Venice or other Italian provinces - whose descendants are just normal everyday Italians.

Having said this, the capture of the Byzantine Empire or 'Romania' as it was known to the actual Greeks at the time was a cataclysmic event. The Empire and city had miraculously survived many attempts on its existence, but this time, things would never ever be the same. The vast amount of Greeks left in the former realm converted to Islam to pay less taxes. That is why modern day Turks along the western coast of Turkey physically look very Greek and also why the current Turkish population is so massive. Even ex Byzantine Royals intermarried with Ottomans helping to create the Ottoman royal family. The Greeks who refused to convert were the Christian religious fanatics who were revolted by sunni islam. Their children were harvested through Ottoman child taxes (the children were taken young from Christian families, forced converted to islam and given a career in the Ottoman army through the infamous Devşirme system). They also had higher taxes thrust on them for remaining christian.

Now here comes the kicker. The Ottomans did not wipe out the Greek race. I have often wondered why they didn't eradicate them from history as Greeks always come back to bite you in the ass unless you completely remove them from a situation. Lately I believe simply it was because the Ottomans believed they could make a lot of money from taxing Christian Greeks, however this would prove to be a massive mistake for the Ottoman Empire. The small remaining population of Christian Greeks slowly recovered numbers. Poor Greeks left stranded within the this new Ottoman Empire tentatively started to flock to Constantinople and Smyrna (modern day Izmir).  Because the Greeks were educated unlike Ottoman subjects (Greeks could read/write/were bilingual unlike Ottoman subjects who were encouraged to become brain-dead soldiers or religious peasants), they soon managed to almost completely dominate the banking sectors, merchant centres and commercial aspects of the Ottoman Empire, even becoming Grand Viziers - second only to the Sultan. The lax and contradictory Greek orthodoxy allowed Greeks to be as educated as their Italian or French counterparts. By the time the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Greeks were the richest demographic in the Empire controlling the farms, banks, hotels and merchant sectors and also had vast populations in Western Turkey - They made up the largest demographic in Smyrna and second largest in Istanbul. They had literally risen from the ashes and had greatly influenced the Ottoman Empire - financially, architecturally and culturally. However this had happened almost under the radar - through subterfuge and corruption. The Ottomans were not happy about this, but they themselves were far too corrupt and infantile to deal with the problem of the Greeks and indeed the Armenians.

Now back to original question now that we have dealt with the brutal reality of history.
Hagia Sofia will never return to Greeks. Not unless someone murders over 70 million Turks, which I don't see on the horizon. Istanbul used to have huge Greek numbers living there. Now there are less than 2000. Nearly all the Greeks have been forced to leave through violent pogroms in the 1950s, population exchanges or through common sense. Istanbul will never be a Christian capital again. Not while we walk the earth. I believe accepting that is liberating.

I believe most logical and fairly smart Greeks accept that without condition. Sadly, that building, Hagia Sofia is the Greek Vatican, but alas, it will always have sunni muslim calligraphy hanging from is various internal domes.  Many second generation Australian or American Greeks, when they are teenagers, repeat what their grandparents tell them that one day Greeks will take back the holy capital...however they soon grow out the phase if they have any sense. The chance was there to recover Anatolia in the 1920's however, it all went wrong..

Personally, having read how corrupt, insidious and completely mad the Byzantine Empire was, I don't feel it is such a big loss. People marvel at the lunacy of Caligula and the embarrassment of Nero only because they have not read about emperors like Justinian II in Byzantium. There is little doubt if the Greeks had managed to take back the city in the 1920s, it would now be one of the global capitals to rival New York or London. But, better the Turks have it. Let them try and make their own version of sunni islamic society there.. Also although I was christened Greek Orthodox as a baby, only my grandfather was Greek, so perhaps 'pure Greeks' may feel stronger about the whole disaster.. I found it painful to even discuss when I was younger I felt so strongly. As I got older I ceased to care.

Greeks will keep the dream alive.. they are good at that. They named a big area of Piraues 'Perama' after the famous Perama in Constantinople for example and the clubs AEK, Panionios, PAOK and Apollon will keep the idea or vision in the memory.

What is sad is that Greeks almost did it. They almost captured Anatolia in the 1920s.. The army made it to the gates of Anakara.. but then it went bad.. My grandfather, god rest his remains, was in that army. He saw much death and horror. He was only 15 at the time. All that is the past now. Anyone who talks about the Megali Idea (Greeks taking back their big population centres in the 1920s) is a fantasist imo.. although, it was a hugely tantalizing and euphoric dream that almost came true...