THE Greek football team bus had inscribed on it “in ancient Greece there were 12 gods. In modern Greece there are 11”.
By the time the final whistle blew at the end of the Euro 2004 final on July 4, with Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis jumping up and down, clenching his fists and cheering, along with all his compatriots, the team had made a dream - and the slogan on their bus - come true.
“It is true, the dream is real, we are holding the Cup high up, we are in seventh heaven,” screamed the commentator for Greek national TV, calling on all Greeks to party until morning.
And party they did, in every capital with a Greek population, not least of them Sofia.
Greek ambassador Prokopios Mantzouranis watched the match at his Residence with his wife and a friend. When the first goal was scored, he recalls, “I was shouting, ‘goal’ so loudly I woke up our 10-month-old son. He started crying because he didn’t know why I was shouting.”
After the final whistle, the ambassador says, he was beside himself with joy. “I started crying. I don’t know what I saying then.” Within a while a crowd of Greek expatriates had gathered outside in the street outside, joyfully shouting slogans. In the meantime, his mobile phone was receiving one congratulatory SMS after another, the precursor of the telegrams that flooded in the following day. Most came from Bulgarian friends, conveying their delight at Greece’s victory, and saying that the achievement was one shared by the whole region. “It was really great,” he told The Sofia Echo.
According to a report in the Bulgarian-language daily Standart, about 1000 Greek students flooded into the streets of Sofia in a spontaneous midnight parade.
“Out of joy, boys and girls started pouring Ouzo on one another, shouting at the top of their lungs ‘Greece, Champion!’” according to Standart.
“Heated by the emotion girls took off their clothes and wrapped their bodies in the national flag of Greece. “(Coach) ‘King Otto Rehhagel made us kings of Europe. We are number one!’ 27-year-old Miklas was screaming in Bulgarian and Greek,” Standart said.
Salespeople from liquor stores in Sofia said they sold all bottles of Ouzo in the midnight fiesta after the final.
Forty-seven-year-old owner of a car sales outfit, Alexander Karagidis, said the following morning that all day he would sell all cars with 20 per cent reduction in price because of the victory.
Reporting from Athens, the Guardian quoted Maria Kokkinou, celebrating outside a bar in the Plaka neighbourhood, as saying: “We never thought we would ever get this far. All I feel is pride, pride, pride. We’ve never won anything, and now we win this in the year we’ve got the Olympics.”
When the celebrations started, all ages and sections of society joined in, with blue-rinse pensioners thronging alongside fresh-faced enthusiasts and even Orthodox priests. Policemen went along with the carnival mood, blowing motorcycle hooters and cheerleading, as the crowds chanted “Greece, Greece, raise the cup, raise the cup”.
“For 20 years I have been watching Greek national teams play and crying because they have always done so badly,” said Marinos Varvaitis, 25. “Now I’m crying because they have done so well.”
From London came the quotation, “When the goal went in there was a lot of plates smashed,” said Stavros Labropulos, the manager of a cafe in Camden. “I expect I will have a huge bill for damage by the end of the night but who cares, we are champions of Europe,” he told the Press Association.
“The Greeks have played this [championship] passionately and from the heart,” news reports quoted Briton Maria Fairman as saying. “It will give them the drive, the boost they need to host the best ever Olympic Games.”
The European press rushed to interpret the meaning of the outcome of Euro 2004.
According to the BBC daily press review on July 5, France’s Le Monde saw the absence of any of Europe’s established soccer giants from the final of Euro 2004 as a sign that the EU’s smaller members were beginning to find their own voice - and not just in football.
The two finalists Portugal and Greece, said Le Monde, “despite lagging behind their better off partners, made it a point of honour to qualify for the (European) single currency”. Both also “took it to heart to respect the respective rules”, it said, and when Lisbon eventually broke them, it “heeded the rebuff” from Brussels, “in contrast with the big (EU) members who disregard the rules when it suits them”.
It means that those that the newsaper described as the EU’s “big guns” were “unable to impose their favourites”, which in turn showed, “their influence in a growing Europe is on the wane”.
Euro 2004, Spain’s El Pais argued, “demonstrated that football is much more than a mere sport” because it can become what the paper calls “a national tonic... for political, social and economic recovery”.
By the time the final whistle blew at the end of the Euro 2004 final on July 4, with Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis jumping up and down, clenching his fists and cheering, along with all his compatriots, the team had made a dream - and the slogan on their bus - come true.
“It is true, the dream is real, we are holding the Cup high up, we are in seventh heaven,” screamed the commentator for Greek national TV, calling on all Greeks to party until morning.
And party they did, in every capital with a Greek population, not least of them Sofia.
Greek ambassador Prokopios Mantzouranis watched the match at his Residence with his wife and a friend. When the first goal was scored, he recalls, “I was shouting, ‘goal’ so loudly I woke up our 10-month-old son. He started crying because he didn’t know why I was shouting.”
After the final whistle, the ambassador says, he was beside himself with joy. “I started crying. I don’t know what I saying then.” Within a while a crowd of Greek expatriates had gathered outside in the street outside, joyfully shouting slogans. In the meantime, his mobile phone was receiving one congratulatory SMS after another, the precursor of the telegrams that flooded in the following day. Most came from Bulgarian friends, conveying their delight at Greece’s victory, and saying that the achievement was one shared by the whole region. “It was really great,” he told The Sofia Echo.
According to a report in the Bulgarian-language daily Standart, about 1000 Greek students flooded into the streets of Sofia in a spontaneous midnight parade.
“Out of joy, boys and girls started pouring Ouzo on one another, shouting at the top of their lungs ‘Greece, Champion!’” according to Standart.
“Heated by the emotion girls took off their clothes and wrapped their bodies in the national flag of Greece. “(Coach) ‘King Otto Rehhagel made us kings of Europe. We are number one!’ 27-year-old Miklas was screaming in Bulgarian and Greek,” Standart said.
Salespeople from liquor stores in Sofia said they sold all bottles of Ouzo in the midnight fiesta after the final.
Forty-seven-year-old owner of a car sales outfit, Alexander Karagidis, said the following morning that all day he would sell all cars with 20 per cent reduction in price because of the victory.
Reporting from Athens, the Guardian quoted Maria Kokkinou, celebrating outside a bar in the Plaka neighbourhood, as saying: “We never thought we would ever get this far. All I feel is pride, pride, pride. We’ve never won anything, and now we win this in the year we’ve got the Olympics.”
When the celebrations started, all ages and sections of society joined in, with blue-rinse pensioners thronging alongside fresh-faced enthusiasts and even Orthodox priests. Policemen went along with the carnival mood, blowing motorcycle hooters and cheerleading, as the crowds chanted “Greece, Greece, raise the cup, raise the cup”.
“For 20 years I have been watching Greek national teams play and crying because they have always done so badly,” said Marinos Varvaitis, 25. “Now I’m crying because they have done so well.”
From London came the quotation, “When the goal went in there was a lot of plates smashed,” said Stavros Labropulos, the manager of a cafe in Camden. “I expect I will have a huge bill for damage by the end of the night but who cares, we are champions of Europe,” he told the Press Association.
“The Greeks have played this [championship] passionately and from the heart,” news reports quoted Briton Maria Fairman as saying. “It will give them the drive, the boost they need to host the best ever Olympic Games.”
The European press rushed to interpret the meaning of the outcome of Euro 2004.
According to the BBC daily press review on July 5, France’s Le Monde saw the absence of any of Europe’s established soccer giants from the final of Euro 2004 as a sign that the EU’s smaller members were beginning to find their own voice - and not just in football.
The two finalists Portugal and Greece, said Le Monde, “despite lagging behind their better off partners, made it a point of honour to qualify for the (European) single currency”. Both also “took it to heart to respect the respective rules”, it said, and when Lisbon eventually broke them, it “heeded the rebuff” from Brussels, “in contrast with the big (EU) members who disregard the rules when it suits them”.
It means that those that the newsaper described as the EU’s “big guns” were “unable to impose their favourites”, which in turn showed, “their influence in a growing Europe is on the wane”.
Euro 2004, Spain’s El Pais argued, “demonstrated that football is much more than a mere sport” because it can become what the paper calls “a national tonic... for political, social and economic recovery”.
