The early “PAOK-nuts, boss-sponsored” years

Hardly enough to pay for my monthly bus pass. That's how much, well, “little” (if not “close to nothing”), I was making when I started working as a sportswriter, in the summer of 1994, before turning 19. It took me years before starting making real money, and I laugh (now) remembering that I NEVER got paid on time, not one single freaking month, not, one, I kid you not, plus, for years I didn't know what a “day off” was, let alone “vacation” (only on national holidays I got to skip work, because, well, the newspaper would be closed those days), BUT, truth be told, being a super lowly (and with ridiculous delay) paid sportswriter did come with a bunch of perks...

First of all, less than two months after starting working, I got kind of “promoted” from writing about Greece's third football category, to writing about PAOK(!!!). Now, in case you are not familiar with Greek football, let me help you get what the “(!!!)” stands for. Writing about the football team of PAOK in Thessaloniki, is as big (in this city) as writing about the Yankees' baseball team in New York, or the Lakers' basketball team in LA. Mind you, that was back in internet-less days, when being a PAOK reporter felt too damn special, partly because there were so few of us (unlike today). Add to that the fact that “PAOK” was the third word I pronounced after “mom” and “dad” (my parents' place was/is just a few blocks away from PAOK's stadium), and you get an idea how  O V E R  T H E  M O O N  I was to have the job I had (despite the pennies I made).

If writing about my beloved club wasn't dreamy enough, the traveling soon started...

Parenthesis... My parents love me to bits, and despite the fact that they were always struggling to make ends meet, they always treated me like a little king, offering me everything I wanted, and more (sometimes they got me stuff even before I had enough time to ask for it!). The only thing missing from my childhood was traveling. When I was 12 we went on vacation with my father for a -super memorable- week. That was it. My last summer vacation as a kid. After that, every summer all my friends would go spend weeks at some coastal place, and I was left back in Thessaloniki, kicking a ball from early in the morning until well after dark, sometimes with company, sometimes alone. If it sounds sad, it really wasn't, because back then I couldn't imagine a better way of spending my time than kicking a ball, so, in a way, I was exactly where I wanted.

Still, the traveling part of the job came as an amazing bonus. I first got on a plane when my newspaper sent me to Athens to cover a game of PAOK. Soon, another flight to Athens followed, and another flight to another city, and another, and another, not to mention the road trips to places closer to Thessaloniki. And then, in 1997, THE perk came along... Traveling abroad...

“ESTADIO SANTIAGO BERNABEU, REAL MADRID – TENERIFE, JORNADA 7, TEMPORADA 97/98”

My first (well, ONLY, until now) game at... mythical Santiago Bernabeu. Cañizares, Roberto Carlos, Hierro, Sanchís, Panucci, Redondo, Seedorf, Zé Roberto, Raúl, Mijatović, Morientes, Karanka and Šuker played that day for RM. Morientes, Mijatović and Seedorf scored their three goals

Madrid in 1997, Bucharest and Glasgow in 1998, Roma/Perugia, Barcelona/Lleida and Tbilisi in 1999, Jerusalem/Haifa, Udine, Amstedam/Eindhoven and Podgorica in 2000, Porto and Zurich in 2002, Aosta in 2003, Tel Aviv in 2004. Not too many, given that this is a seven years' period we are talking about, but especially the 1997-2002 trips... “made my year”, not just my week or month.

Now, I can imagine how “traveling on your boss's money to watch a football match and interview members of a football team” may sound AWESOME to most of you (the “traveling on your boss's money” I'm sure it appeals even to the non-football fans among you, even though I seriously doubt you're reading this blog and have reached this part of this piece if you are NOT a football fan), but, believe it or not, before turning 28, I asked my boss to consider sending others abroad(!)...

I guess to some of you this may seem as crazy as... having Miss Venezuela 2013 as your girlfriend and telling her that you are breaking up with her, Miss Venezuela for crying out loud!, how more absurd could it get?!, BUT, in cases like this, what crosses my mind is a line I first heard Charlie Sheen say in a “Two and a half men” episode. Some would call it “sexist”, I call it funny. “For every gorgeous woman out there, there is a guy tired of banging her”... No doubt, traveling abroad for a newspaper was a seriously “gorgeous woman”, but at some point I did get tired, for a whole bunch of reasons that I will mercifully spare you.

1 to 14

The first 14 football games I watched outside of Greece, between 1997 and 2004. In some of the trips I mentioned above, I didn't get to watch any matches, instead I just interviewed members of teams that PAOK were about to face in UEFA competitions. As for Podgorica, it was a basketball game I watched/covered, Budućnost – PAOK, November 9, 2000.

1 Atlético Madrid-Mérida 4-0, Madrid, Spain, 1997, October 15
2 Real Madrid-Tenerife 3-0, Madrid, Spain, 1997, October 18
3 Atlético Madrid-PAOK 5-2, Madrid, Spain, 1997, October 21
4 Spain U21-Greece U21 1-0, Bucharest, Romania, 1998, May 31
5 Rangers-PAOK 2-0, Glasgow, Scotland, 1998, August 11
6 Perugia-PAOK 0-0, Perugia, Italy, 1999, August 2
7 Lleida-PAOK 2-5, Lleida, Spain, 1999, August 6
8 Lokomotiv-PAOK 0-7, Tbilisi, Georgia, 1999, September 16
9 Maccabi Haifa-Beitar Jerusalem 0-0, Haifa, Israel, 2000, September 9
10 Udinese-PAOK 1-0, Udine, Italy, 2000, October 24
11 PSV-PAOK 3-0, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 2000, November 23
12 Dragões Sandinenses-Leixões 0-0, Porto, Portugal, 2002, September 8
13 Olympique Marseille-PAOK 5-1, Aosta, Italy, 2003, July 26
14 Maccabi Tel Aviv-Helsinki 1-0, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2004, August 4