Own goal
Long before Greece’s match against Turkey, our present-day freedom fighters once again mistook soccer for the 1821 War of Independence. To be sure, they kept up the pretexts, saying that «this is just a game and not some clash of nations, religions or civilizations» or some reconstitution of the Dervenakia battle, but their gaze said otherwise. However, when goals started to pour into Greece’s net – when, in other words, it became obvious that victory is not encoded in our DNA after all – then another obvious-yet-oft-denied fact was exposed: Our genes do not reflect our cultural superiority over others, especially the Turks, who have been slammed as «uncivilized» by our archbishop. So here we are, the civilized, booing the Turkish national anthem, taking aim at the players with fireworks, bottles, stones and flagpoles. We even hurled a drum (music does not tame the wildest passions after all) before throwing barbs and all sorts of objects against our own players, or «traitors.» And since the stadium bears the name of Georgios Karaiskakis – a warlord who it should be remembered was killed by his compatriots – we did not miss out on a small-scale civil war in the stands, beating the hell out of each other driven by a mix of pure Christian love and ancient Greek gentleness. It was a mass display of superior culture, so no one can hide behind the recurrent sound bite «violence caused by a small number of hot-headed fans.» It was not just the barbaric behavior of nationalist groups that made the player Costas Katsouranis admit our descent to a «low level.» The claim that the trouble came about because we are bad losers is groundless. Because we are also bad winners, as shown by the fact that after winning the Euro in Portugal we made Albanians and other foreigners part of the celebrations by beating them up. Back then, we criticized a «small number of hot-headed fans.» We were wrong, but deliberately so.
