For the greeks, sport is no joke. And this is especially true regarding football and basketball, which are the two biggest sports in the country. Greece was for a long time exposed to chaos-like games, where the fans often caused riots and fights. But a couple years ago, there was a change in rules and legislation saying that only the fans of the home team were allowed at the stadium, something that has made the games much better and calmer. Now, instead, more energy is focused on the fans own teams. Fireworks, flares and above all passionate supporters create a powerful atmosphere during the matches.

A warning should be raised on the matter of publicly showing which team you support. Of course, mmost of the times there is no problem but you should be careful when rivalry between the various club supporters is strong and it can lead to bad things

A big part of the graffiti in Athens – but also all around Greece – is football related. It is often written in the colors of the team and the message is usually the name of the club but also the firms for the respective team. You can drive on a remote mountain road in the middle of nowhere but still come across graffiti that have to do with some club. The greek league is called Super League and consists of 16 teams.

“The big 4” in greek football

AEK Athens (Yellow/black).

AEK Athens has two swedes in the team and one swede as its sports director: The swedish national team midfielder Jakob Johansson, former Örebro midfielder Astrit Ajdarevic and the former national team centerback Daniel Majstorovic as sports director. At the moment AEK Athens play their home games at the formerOlympic Stadium, also called OAKA, but a new stadium is going to be built in Nea Filadelfia which is expected to be completed in a couple of years. Areas associated with AEK Athens are mainly Nea Filadelfeia but also Nea Ionia.

Panathinaikos (Green).

Panathinaikos has three swedes in the team: National team striker Marcus Berg, Niklas Hult who came from Nice France in 2016 and former Malmö player Guillermo Molins. The team play their home games at Apostolos Nikolaidis stadium in the center of Athens. The central parts of the city are usually associated with the green colors of Panathinaikos.

Olympiacos (Red/White).

This is the dominant team in greek football and it is also the team that often is out playing in europe. Olof Mellberg has played here and still has a legend status among the supporters. The team’s stadium Karaiskakis is located in Pireus and this is also where the support for Olympiacos is the strongest.

PAOK Thessaloniki (Black/White).

The biggest team in the northern parts of Greece from the second biggest town in the country – Thessaloniki. This results in great rivalry with the clubs from the capital. No swedes are currently playing for PAOK but during 2015 the swedish national team goalkeeper Robin Olsen played here. Toumba is the stadium where PAOK play their home games.

It is usually these four teams who fights for the leauge title and for playing in Europe. Olympiacos has been really dominant and they have nine league titles during the last ten years which says alot about their dominance.

Tickets

The easiest way to get tickets is to buy them online at the clubs respective website. But to be able to do that it is required that you have a greek “social security number”, also called AMKA. Due to the turbulent games that characterized greek sports during the recent years, this was introduced to make it easier to identify who has caused trouble as the person’s seat number can be identified by the AMKA. This obviously complicates things for non-greeks who wants to go to a game. Instead, you can go down to the stadium some hours before the game starts and buy the tickets there in the special kiosks. Instead of giving an AMKA, you will have to show them your passport and passport-number or id-number.