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As you have maybe learned in the last article, the Ancient Greeks are known to have played many ball games such as Episkyros. The game can be traced back to Ancient Greece to the 5th century BC. The modern soccer was brought to Greece by the Brits though.
It is being said that in 1866 on the island of Corfu, members of British warship wanted to play football with the local people of the island. Even though the Greeks did not know how to play soccer, they won against the Brits. Soccer as a game was not well-known on the mainland of Greece, but in the thriving Greek cities of Asia Minor, especially Smyrna, a nowadays Turkish city called Izmir. In this city, the first Greek clubs were founded in the late 19th century such as Panionios F.C., which still exists today.
Additionally, the game began to spread out after the first international Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, which were being held in modern history and also included Soccer as an unofficial event. A national game was held on 12 April between the two representative teams of Greece and Denmark.
In addition to this, when more than a million Greeks had to flee the former destructed Asia Minor, which today is a peninsula of Turkey situated in Western Asia, and moved to the Greek mainland in 1922, they brought their excitement and love for the game along with them. New football clubs were founded in every city, mostly by the refugees.
In 1926, The Greek Football Federation (Hellenic Football Federation, HFF) was founded. It is the main and only authority that organizes the Greek Soccer Leagues and presents the national Greek team. Furthermore, in the middle of the 1920‘s, the soccer club from Greece that has won the most league Championships currently, called Olympiakos Piräus, was also being founded.
The Greek Football Federation joined international ground when it became part of the FIFA („Fédération Internationale de Football Association“) one year later in 1927.
In the same year, the first league of professional football in Greece was officially established as the Panhellenic Championship.
The league existed until 1959 until it was replaced by the Alpha Ethniki, which ran until 2006. Since then it is known as the Superleague Greece. The Superleague consists of 14 teams, starts in August and ends in May. The teams play 26 games plus 6-game Championship play-offs in order to outline the final champions. Internationally, the Super League Greece is placed as the 15th in the UEFA (Union of European Football Association) ranking leagues, compared to other European leagues.
Next to the league Championship, there is the Greek Football Cup, which is being held since 1931; Olympiacos is the most successful club participating in this cup as well, earning 28 trophies so far.
As mentioned before, the first unofficial national game of Greece, called Ethniki Elladas, was in 1896. The first official game came in 1929, in a 1–4 loss to Italy. Greece has qualified for the FIFA World Cup three times and for the European Championship four times, winning one of them in 2004 in Portugal.
A national league for women has existed since 1987, called the Greek Football Women A Division. There is also a woman‘s national team, which participated once in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
I hope this article gave you an insight on the history of Greece‘s Soccer and summarized the most important facts about it for you!
Sources: https://www.epo.gr/Default.aspx?a_id=48233 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece_national_football_team
