It has been written many times (and rightly so!) that football is the most “democratic” sport ever invented. You don’t need to be tall, fast, flexible, clever, strong, rich, etc. to “kick a ball around,” even at the highest level; hard training, teamwork, selflessness, and a DREAM are enough. It is one of the most affordable activities someone can take up: a street or an open lot, two stones or two crates for goalposts, a ball or even a plastic bottle, and the match is on. Football “[…] is perhaps the only topic of conversation that can bring a university professor and a street cleaner to the same table as equal interlocutors. That is the power of football,” notes Nikos Gavalas.
So the reasons for the popularity enjoyed by “the ball” are obvious, as are the causes of a relatively simple sport gathering around itself the expression of ideological, social, and above all geographical identities, among others.
But what is OLYMPIACOS? We may be talking about the world’s largest multi-sport organization (in terms of the sports it develops at championship level and its trophies), yet OLYMPIACOS is a football-oriented SUPPORTERS’ ASSOCIATION (and not a sports club).
To understand OLYMPIACOS, one must understand Piraeus. And to understand Piraeus (essentially the former Piraeus Prefecture), one must look back at how and why the top-heavy (Athens-centered) modern Greek state was established. Consequently, although the late “Panathinaikos” Georgios Kalafatis’s idea of “one city, one team” may indeed have been groundbreaking in football terms and ideologically a natural consequence—though athletically inspired by Panellinios Gymnastics Club—it took flesh and form only in Piraeus, with THRYLOS. Why this happened has been analyzed many times by many people.

OLYMPIACOS was the first consciously organized mass “voice of the people who have no voice, of the people who struggle every day to feed their families”—a world diverse in education, social standing, origins, politics, and so on. What makes the social phenomenon known as OLYMPIACOS unique is that it did not have only a social-class dimension (poor-rich), but also a geographical one, since important self-made business figures from the provinces literally had to survive against the voracious ambitions and appetites of a centralized—Athens-centered—state that swallowed up everything in its path.
Piraeus in the early 20th century—a city that had once been a model and driving force of Greek productivity—found itself abandoned, exhausted, maligned, and even mutilated (beginning in 1925 with the detachment of Neo Faliro). Yet the city was waiting for its moment to launch a spirited counterattack, reclaiming its lost glory and seeking to “punish” those who had dishonored and betrayed it. The entire periphery, as well as the working-class and lower-middle-class suburbs of the center, which were expanding, followed suit; PIERCUS IS EVERYWHERE.
OLYMPIACOS was the spearhead of Greek society’s resistance and counteroffensive, and it was no coincidence that this emerged from the coal dust of the Faliro Velodrome, in opposition to the Athens-centered policies of the establishment and those who washed its feet. THRYLOS and rebetiko were the strongholds against an elitist political correctness imposed by the center, serving social, racial, political, and geographical exclusion.

It is obvious that much has changed since the early 20th century. Nevertheless, many fanciful narratives have been ingrained among THRYLOS’s opponents, chiefly by erasing parts of history for reasons of social cohesion. The truth is that the way this has been done, and continues to be done, serves neither national nor ideological nor even supporters’ interests, but entirely self-serving purposes. And, as has been proven, the distortion and gaps in history probably create room for greater polarization, leaving no room for acknowledgment and, ultimately, for passions to subside. The identity, vision, and emotions that were born and took root once, somewhere, had their reasons for doing so—and have a future, too; ultimately, we must know them “so that we do not lose our bearings.”
With this book, Nikos Gavalas takes us on a journey to the early period of OLYMPIACOS’s founding, using simple language and presenting an exceptionally elegant volume. He masterfully manages not to fuel supporters’ passions and fanaticism, but instead to convey intact the spirit of the era and its protagonists.