Home 2004 – Adidas
The Country
I used to love Greek mythology as a child. While the other kids were gallivanting around the playground pretending to be a Ninja Turtle or Lion-o, Lord of the Thundercats, I was the mighty Achilles, King of the Myrmidons, Scourge of Troy and Devourer of Dairylea Triangles (even near-invincible warriors need a packed lunch), a role that required the imaginary disembowelling of anybody who looked ‘a bit Trojan’ and which would prompt more than one interview with the school counsellor as to whether everything was alright at home? Looking now at some of Greece’s most famous sons and their exploits through a more seasoned, cynical lens, it’s remarkable just how much incompetence there was on show. Odysseus stands as a prime example here. Celebrated as the most cerebral of all the Greek warriors at Troy – the wooden horse was his idea – the King of Ithaca somehow took ten years to sail less than 300 nautical miles home following the war, ostensibly because he got waylaid battling a cyclops, an evil sorceress and a big fuck off whirlpool*, whereas in reality he probably just forgot to turn right at Crete or something.
*Odysseus’ blatant fabrications are now immortalised in Homer’s Odyssey, which is considered one of the most important works in Western literature. Don’t you just love it when a lie gets massively out of hand?
Sadly, modern day Greece could really use a hero, ideally one who can use a calculator correctly. The country’s recent economic woes have been well documented, although observers remain divided as to whether the Greeks themselves are to blame, having misrepresented their finances in order to join the Eurozone in 2001, or if the EU, fully aware that this was going on, should shoulder responsibility for ploughing on anyway with the blind optimism of a man brandishing a tenner at the bar of a Covent Garden craft beer pub. Regardless, it’s the everyday Greek citizens who have inevitably suffered most through the resulting austerity measures. Between 2010 and 2012, violent protests in front of the Parliament building in Athens were commonplace, with the national guard powerless to intervene, not least because the latest round of budget cuts had resulted in their being replaced with a brigade of mean looking girl scouts balancing a sleeping hedgehog on each shoe. See image below.
Through all of this carnage, visitor numbers have surprisingly remained steady, which is handy considering that the shredded husk of Greece’s economy is 80% reliant on tourism. Aside from the obvious attraction of having beautiful islands, Europe’s sunniest climate and kebabs that don’t taste as though the vendor has been keeping the pitta bread warm under his armpits, the warmth and generosity of the Greeks themselves is often reason enough to keep people coming back. Indeed, it’s perfectly normal for local restaurateurs to ply foreign diners with a generous glass or six of Ouzo, the startlingly robust aniseed liqueur that’s basically a close relative of Sambuca, specifically a relative who spends a lot of time helping the police with their enquiries.
The National Team
When it comes to international football upsets, that Greece won Euro 2004 still frankly beggars belief. Back then the team’s mere presence at a major finals was considered a surprise given they’d managed just two previous tournament appearances; at the 1980 European Championships and 1994 World Cup, and had failed to register a win at either. Most bookies were thus suitably pessimistic, offering odds of up to 150-1 on the Greeks returning from Portugal with the trophy. Even after stunning the host nation 2-1 in the competition curtain raiser, most pundits cited the result as being more down to Portuguese nerves than anything else, with the plucky upstarts expected to shuffle off stage shortly thereafter, satisfied with the one spot of mischief they’d wrought upon the competition. Not a bit of it. Although Greece failed to win another group game – they drew 1-1 with Spain and lost 2-1 to Russia – four points proved sufficient to squeeze into the quarter finals. From there they deservedly dispatched reigning champions France, snuck past an excellent Czech side in the semis thanks to a silver goal* and then, just for good measure, defeated Portugal again in the final, sending man-baby extraordinaire Cristiano Ronaldo into a teary meltdown, an image that nobody watching found absolutely hilarious. Because of course they didn’t. Why would they?
*Remember the silver goal rule? No? Good. It was stupid.
Despite being responsible for such heart-warming imagery, Greece’s shocking success was not universally popular. The team’s pragmatic, often cynical style under veteran German coach Otto Rehhagel wasn’t exactly fun to watch, while the fact they failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup and then posted three straight defeats in a dismal defence of their European crown in 2008 does rather hint at the whole thing being a bit of a fluke.
Still, if you can’t be good then you might as well be lucky. At Brazil 2014 the Greeks generally performed as if their World Cup participation had come about as the result of winning a raffle, and yet they still managed to scrape through to the knockout rounds for the first time ever thanks to a highly dubious last gasp penalty against the Ivory Coast. Perhaps appropriately the ‘miracle spot kick’ was both won and converted by striker Georgios Samaras, a man most famous for legitimately being our lord and saviour Jesus Christ.
Left: Jesus. Right: Also Jesus.
The Shirt
Greece is one of those countries where I’m never 100% convinced as to which colour is supposed to be the home shirt and which is the away version. Certainly in recent years white seems to have edged ahead of blue in the Greek kit cupboard. Looking back at that heady summer of 2004 however, and things aren’t quite so clear-cut, especially seeing as the team’s six matches on route to the trophy saw them don each shirt three times. They couldn’t even remain consistent when faced with the same opposition, wearing blue for the tournament’s opening game before switching to white for the final, both against hosts Portugal, who it should be pointed out did nothing to necessitate this change, clad as they were in red and green throughout the tournament’s duration.
Anyway, looking through the online evidence, it appears widely accepted that the blue Euro 2004 shirt present in my collection is indeed the home kit of the era. Also, the fact that I’ve looked through so much online evidence in order to reach this conclusion suggests that I should probably leave the house on a more frequent basis. As for the design, it’s very generic Adidas, nothing to write home about, or indeed to write much of a blog about. Incidentally, it was my wearing of this shirt to a university lecture in 2005 that prompted a classmate to enquire – having noted the international nature of my wardrobe over the weeks – whether I had a shirt from every country in the world. At the time I simply joked about the idea, telling him that such a collection would be nigh on impossible to assemble. Well, I certainly showed me.