Kiprianos P . 2012, \' Book Review Alexander Kitroeff : Greece , Europe , Panathinaikos ! A century o f Greek history, 1908 – 2008New York: Greekworks.com, 2010. 344 p. Historein , vol. 12: 221 - 225.

Pandelis Kiprianos, University of Patras Alexandros Kitroef, “Greece, Europe, Panathinaikos! 100 years of Greek history 1908-2008. greekworks.com, 2010, 344 pages.

Professor of history and director of Peace and Mondialization Centre at Haveford College, Pensylvania, USA, but also a long-time fan of the Athenian football club Panathinaikos, Alexandre Kitroef displays his intention on the title of his book: to construct a centennial social history of one of the most important and popular Greek athletic clubs and, from this standpoint, to provide an insight of the Greek history. Based on primary sources, documents and interviews with some of the protagonists, and secondary as well, the book comprises eleven chapters, according essentially the turns in the history of the club and the evolution of the Greek football. As it is suggested in the title, for the author the history of Panathinaikos oscillates between two frames of reference, the Greek and the European. In other words, Panathinaikos is a Greek club, playing and acting in a given national context and, at the same time, a club self-defined as European, aiming at be at the height of the best European clubs. This perspective, according to Citroef, will serve as guide and as goal to fulfill. After having outlined the first years of the existence of Panathinaikos and of sports in Greece in the first chapter, the author focuses, on the following two chapters, on the institutionalization, at first, and the prevalence as “king of sports” of the football, thereafter. In the forth chapter, the author analyses the period 1945-1959, during which football «ανδρώνεται» (comes of age??). The sixth chapter covers the six “golden” years of the football team of the Club, i.e. 1960-1965, during which Panathinaikos dominated the Greek football league. The seventh chapter recounts one of the greatest, if not the greatest, moments in the history of Panathinaikos, the epic Wembley, which means the qualification to the finals of the Champions Cup teams of Europe. In the eighteenth chapter Kitroef deal with what he terms ‘end of epoch’, which means the period from Wembley to 1979, marked by the

weakening of

Panathinaikos and the transition of the Greek football, in 1979, from the semiprofessionalization to the professionalization as well. The book could be, certainly, read chronologically, chapter by chapter, as a clear and pleasant narrative on the history of a club and its activities, in a given

national and international context, but also as a portrait of interconnected issues concerning the whole Greek society. In the following we will focus on some of these topics analyzed by the author which have marked football and the sports but the whole Greek society. The ideological orientations of the leaders of the sport up close to the WWII were also mirrored in their preference to classical athletics as the Greek sport par excellence. "And this”, the writer says, "because classical athletics referred back to ancient Greece and served the ideology of the historical continuity of Hellenism from antiquity to the present. The use of classical athletics as an ideological tool led in 1934 to the failed attempt of their reviving with events tailored to the way the ancient Greeks compete”. (p. 83). The project was not adopted because football especially after the Asia Minor Catastrophe kept on winning fans so that football resulted to become, as noted in a sports newspaper in 1932, "king of sports" in Greece. The spread of football is also reflected in its political reception and use. We know that two days before depositing the power in the Fourth National Assembly, Nicolaos Plastiras, held its last public appearance as leader of the Revolution on Sunday, December 30, 1923 to the masses who watched the football match AthensPiraeus at the ex velodrome of New Faliron.1 Since then, Kitroef shows, the relationship between football and politics remains complicated. Konstantinos Karamanlis came in May 1956 in the Cup game Panathinaikos-Olympiacos in Alexandras’ Avenue, "he cracked an Easter egg with the captains of the two teams and then immediately left (p. 85). Some years later, and after the mediation of the dictatorship of the Colonels, which invested in football being careful to keep some balance, the relationship between football and politics becomes closer. Just remember that at various times as members of the administration of Panathinaikos served many prominent politicians from Kostas Kotzias to George Rallis. Throughout the book, the author deals with a topical aspect of football. Against a somewhat romantic approach which tends to idealize the past, Kitroeff shows

that

violence

is

not

a

current

phenomenon,

but

on

our

days

expanded. Phenomena of violence are identified and particularly in the early meetings

Christos. Chatziiosif, (2003), “Parliament and Dictatorship”, in History of Greece of the 20th Century: The interwar years 1922-1940, ed. Christos Xatziiossif, (Athens: Vivliorama, 2003): tome b’, part 2: 101 (in Greek). 1

of Panathinaikos against Olympiakos in the 1920's and 1930's. However, Kitroef says, violence began to expand after 1945. Related to violence and sports passions are two issues, the organization of football and the role of supporters. We know that over time football loses its amateur character, becomes more and more professional, fact that is reflected in the goals and practices of the parties involved. This development is reflected in the structure of the game, its publicity, its rules, and of course the salary of players and their perception by the society. The change is so important that if we followed Johan Huizinga’s argument,2

we

would

say

that

football

is

no

longer

a

game.

This progress marked by several episodes, most prominent of them the deletion of the players of the National Team of Greece in 1953, incident that was the canvas of the well-known film by Vasilis Georgiadis “Aces of football”. It went on in 1959, with the organization of the national championship, which opened the way for the "semiprofessionalism" and twenty years later, in 1979, with the creation of Professional Football Companies (FC) and the transition to professionalism. This development is not linear. A whole generation, incarnated by the emblematic figure of the former football player and president of the club Apostolos Nikolaidis, attempts to salvage the values of amateurism and of fair play. In this tradition, according the author, it is largely based the continuing care of Panathinaikos to cultivate a large number of sports other than football. Here perhaps lies and the epithet "Vazeles» for the fans of Panathinaikos, which propagates in the 1950's. “The persistence of Panathinaikos” Kitroeff writes, “to the bourgeois-based ideal of fair play and the distinguish that this attitude presupposed to popular violence (in one version of masculinity, too) saw the name "Vaselines" later "Vazeles" for the supporters of Panathinaikos "(p. 106). Relative to the nationalization and professionalization of football can be also considered the process of organization of supporters in particular by establishing Fans Clubs who meant to play an influential role in the life of teams, especially of the “big ones”. "Fans Clubs", Kitroeff says, “existed since the beginning of the (league of) First National. They were basically local organizations of different areas of Athens in a coordination and relationship with the club”. (p. 152). “The collective expression of feelings from the petals,” he continues, “took a more coordinated form early in the 2

Johan Huizinga (1955, originally published in 1938). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Beacon Press, Boston.

period 1966-1967 by a group of supporters who gathered over the Gate 13 in the petal to the Hippocrates Street. In 1968, the Gate 13 was founded as the first organized association in Greece, and it was the forerunner of the associations that followed and multiplied after 1981 when the Panhellenic Club of Panathinaikos Friends was established (PALEFIP). I shall conclude with two critical issues aptly analysed by Kitroef and which always beset both the Greek football clubs and the Greek society as a whole: the trust in

institutions

and

the

relationship

with

the

surrounding

world.

The world of sports does not trust the institutions that institutionalizes itself or / and then

state. The

distrust

in

football

is

paradigmatically

reflected

on

“the lord of the match” the referee, who should treat both groups fairly. For this reason, up until 1967 in the major matches well-known foreign referees were called. Although since then referees are Greeks the problem was not solved, but we could say that worsened with the revelation of the “shack”, “term-abbreviated” as the author notes, “for the background of the arbitration (...) (p . 275). The Greek athletics and football in particular is a mirror of the relations between Greeks and “foreigners”, Westerners and Easterners. The image is reflected in the performance of Greek teams at all levels, too. In the words of the author: “The world of Greek football stood in awe and respect in the face of powerful countries and football teams of Europe. They were considered as standards and examples to be imitated. This attitude had to do more with a more general view about the relationship between Greece and Western Europe, which constituted the ideal developmental and cultural model or, better, the source of different models that the country had to embrace. The dissidents, for ideological reasons, to this view considered the socialist countries of Eastern Europe as the key standards. Anyway, in the international football industry, there were not ideological differences which intersected the eastwest axis: everyone admired the big names of Europe as a whole.” (p. 163). This picture is quite different from that at the political level in which admiration for the West and particularly the European Union is overshadowed by its refusal. This deviation can be read as an expression of relative autonomy of sport from political ideologies. In any case, the participation of Greek teams in European cups created new facts on Greek sports and especially football. “Thus, the European orientation of the club,” Kitroef concludes, referring to Panathinaikos, “found a new field of expression, especially with the first European successes of the team and, of

course, the crowning moment of its appearance in the final of the Champions League in 1971. Then, the successful course of the team over the coming decades crystallizes the view that Panathinaikos is predominantly a “European” group of Greek football, the praiseworthy ambassador of domestic football in Europe, in a period especially during which Greece was taking its place among the countries of European Community.”