Cup Match

Greece is a place for sports enthusiastic, specially if you like to see great atmospheres in the stadiums!
I lived in Greece for about 9 months and the first match i saw was a basketball one, Paok against a team that to be honest i don't remember the name ahah! It wasn't the match itself that took me to the stadium, it was the atmosphere Greeks create in every single sport event. The stadium was full with 14.000 fans, singing during the whole match, and imagine, Paok lost!

But my biggest experience in this field was at a football match, I had the luck to watch live in Thessaloniki, a city with two major clubs, Paok and Aris, (with an advantage of Paok in terms of fan's number and team quality). The match i went to see was Paok vs Olympiakos for the national cup. I managed to get free tickets from a Portuguese Paok player, Vieirinha, who was born in the same city as me, Porto, and that helped in this achievement!
During the week of the match everyone was speaking about it, and i could have an idea of what was expecting me.

Olympiakos is known in Greece to control the football business, and it's also the team with the more fans, nevertheless it worth to say that not even one Olympiako's fan came to Thessaloniki! The hate between them are tremendous and nobody from Athens wanted to put his life in danger!

The day of the big clash arrived and the city almost stopped, the traffic started to become chaotic some hours before the beginning of the match. I went to the stadium 2 hours before to get a picture of the whole atmosphere! Streets and buses full of fans, Paok flags everywhere, all kinds of businesses, even people trying to sell plastic to serve as a seat.
Since the moment I've entered the stadium everything was magic, and to describe these moments one picture worth a thousand words.

It is one of the days in your life that you never forget, the Greek fans are maybe the most passionate ones. From the first till the last minute they support the team with the same strength! It's difficult to find the words that can express my feelings, you just need to be there.

Paok won the match 1-0 with a goal from another Portuguese player, Sergio Conceição, which was the cherry on top of the cake! Unfortunately they lost the second match in Athens by 2-0 which kicked them out of the cup but Paok did a very good Greek championship finishing in 2nd place, above teams like Panathinaikos and AEK.
Paokara!!

You may want to check my other hubs related to football:

Boavista FC

Forces of Corruption