Our Family Blog: Larisa wins 2nd Greek Soccer Cup in its history!

Today's post will be a little different...It will be full of soccer and Larisa, Greece. Take it away Dad:-)

Bro, enjoy the show!

May 5 2007 was a historic day for Dad's hometown soccer team AEL from Larisa, Greece. The team made it to the Greek Cup final for the third time in its history and beat PAO from Athens 2-1. The two previous losses in 1982 and 1984 was again to PAO, so I guess, we were due:-)

It is hard to describe the feelings all natives from Larisa have about our soccer team. Let me try...Larisa is a small town of about 150,000 people in Central Greece. It is located in the biggest valley and Mount Olympus looks down on it from the north. Everything in Greece revolves around Athens where about 4 million people reside. So, in soccer, the rich Athenian teams monopolize the championships and the Cup. Little Larisa is the only team outside of Athens that has ever won a soccer championship! It was in 1988 when Dad left his studies at EMU to briefly come back to watch the last 3 games of that historic year and celebrate the only championship trophy that escaped Athens! God, that gives Dad chills!

The 80s was a magical decade for our team. 3 Cup Finals (we won in 1985) and the championship in 1988. And our litle soccer team made us again very proud with excellent showings in the European competitions too! Lots of those players became legends and Dad played and knew some of them pesonally (one was his classmate!) Growing up as kids we played soccer in our spare time non stop and we would dream that one day we would play for AEL. The anticipation of the Sunday games sometimes was so intense we could not sleep. Several times we skipped school when there was a weekday game and the professors would understand:-)

Dad was in Chicago for a financial planning conference and could not attend the game (oh, he tried!). So, he took a little detour to the Chicago Greektown and watched it live. Watching AEL win the Cup again after 22 long years was something you just can not put in words....watching so many former players come back to be with the current players was just phenomenal. There is a saying that all Larisa people have a fatal disease...the love for this little team, we call it the little wild horse that keeps on riding!

Another equally significant fact about this team is that over the years we have lost many...I still remember the day that the three best players driving to Athens to play in the National Team had a car accident and two got killed (the other one miraculously survived and even did some TV commentary during this game!) The two dead kids were 18 and 19 years old, Grandpa knew the family of one and we went to the funeral in their village. This is the first time that Dad came face to face with a dead person (open casket)...Dad remembers that so vividly, he was about 13 years old. Then we lost a fan on a bus going to the game. One year an opposing fan fired a firework cracker that crossed the field and hit one of our fans in the neck and killed him. The hero of the 1988 championship team also was lost in a car accident...and many others. That's why you still see references to AEL's dead in big games like this.

Being in a soccer game in Larisa pales to the atmosphere in games here (yes sometimes it may get out of hand but, for the most part, is just an amazing experience!)

When the team plays away from home, there is a huge caravan...Dad still has great memories driving to games with Grandpa when he was a kid.