In Athens, you don't just pick a team; you are a team

	Greek powers Olympiakos and Panathinaikos are among the world's most heated rivals. AP

I'm a big fan of Greek soccer.

My father is Greek, and I first learned how to kick a ball on the dirt field around the corner from our apartment in Athens. The first professional match I ever attended was a preseason friendly between Panathinaikos and Atlético Madrid at the Olympic Stadium. I've been a Panathinaikos fan ever since, and I troll Web sites such as GreekSoccer.com every week for soccer news from the old country.

But I didn't watch last Wednesday's England-Greece friendly when I was on vacation on the Cycladic island of Paros. A meaningless match in northern England didn't quite pierce my retsina-soaked beach-bum consciousness.

The match, however, did get Paros' chic seaside cafés to turn off their stereos and turn on their Parthenon-sized plasma TVs. As I flip-flopped by one of them, I thought: Only soccer could do this.

Normally, Greek café managers -- all of whom are poster-boy Mediterrasexuals in white Dolce & Gabbana everything -- don't pause the disco thump for anything. Because ever since Greece won Euro 2004, the Greeks have gone soccer-mad. Everyone believes the national team, despite failing to qualify for this summer's World Cup, is an elite side that can compete with the Germanys, Italys, and Englands of the world.

The hype has blown all the way to New England, where an American soccer freak friend of mine recently called Greece a "European soccer power."

"European power?" I scoffed. "Greece hasn't been a European power in anything since syphilis took down Alexander the Great."

I've found that any mention of syphilis is a great conversation-killer.

Anyway, England spanked Greece 4-0. Reports in the Greek papers the next day continued on the theme that has existed since Greece failed to qualify for the '06 World Cup: Well, it was nice while it lasted.

And now we Greek soccer crazies can get back to our little domestic league, which kicked off this past weekend with much fanfare.

Okay, maybe not "much" fanfare. After all, the Atromitos-OFI match drew only 402.

But still this season marks a new big-time era for club soccer in Greece. For one, the '07 Champions League final will take place in Athens' Olympic Stadium. More important, though, the powers-that-be have pulled off an English FA-style rebranding: The old Ethniki A league is now the Greek Super League.

Can't you already hear the reverberating monster-truck style radio ads: "Greek soccer is now SUPER!...SUPer...Super...super..."

But the reality is, this league is not super. There are 16 teams in the top flight, but only the big three Athens clubs -- Olympiakos, Panathinaikos, and AEK -- have a realistic shot. Since 1927, when the first national competition was founded, one of the big three has won the title all but six times; Larisa was the last upset winner, in 1988.

Most Greeks, including those outside of Athens, are divided among the big three. Even my own family is split: My dad is AEK, my brother is Olympiakos, and I'm Panathinaikos.

To a Greek, you're not for a team; you are a team, as if the team defines you in some way. Like most things in the Old World, historical context helps explain things, though, again like most things in the Old World, it doesn't explain everything.

Olympiakos (the accent goes on the last syllable, by the way, not the second to last syllable as Western TV announcers always say it) is actually the team of Piraeus, the port of Athens, which was traditionally home of the working and lower classes. Panathinaikos (see previous parenthetical) was the team of Athens proper, supported by the true Athenians. And AEK (pronounced "AH-ek"), which stands for the "Athletic Union of Constantinople," represented the ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor who arrived after the 1923 exchange of populations with Turkey.

As in other countries, these old distinctions and rivalries faded away years ago as soccer's era of multimillion-euro transfers and 55,000-seat stadiums washed in. Now, the team you support is sometimes as ephemeral as the color of its jersey -- Olympiakos is red, Panathinaikos green, AEK yellow.

But a grasp of the Greek game is still a decent point of reference if you ever make it over there. If I've learned anything over the past 30 years of, it's that even a sliver of knowledge about the local league and teams can open huge doors into a foreign culture.

A few years ago, my car broke down in the rugged mountains of southern Greece. It was late afternoon, almost quitting time, and the mechanic at the shop I coasted into was not in the mood to deal with an outsider. I was nervous I would be stuck there for a while. But he was wearing an AEK cap, and in my dreadfully accented Greek, I asked him how AEK would do this year.

He looked at me like I was a ghost. "What team are you?" he enquired.

"Panathinaikos," I replied.

He nodded thoughtfully, trying to figure out why this half-Greek, half-something-else was a Panathinaikos fan. "How will you guys do this year?" he finally asked.

"Better than AEK."

Silence. Then, suddenly, he smiled. "You're right about that," he said and proceeded to fix my car.

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