Tag: Greece

Dries Mertens booked for attempting Three Stooges routine with opponent’s nose

“Why I oughta…”


When we last left Dries Mertens, he was pretending to urinate on the corner flag like a dog after scoring a goal for Napoli. Now, on international duty with Belgium, he’s acting out a half-baked nose-pinching scheme he must have gotten from an old episode of the Three Stooges.

Mertens’ unwilling partner in this odd display was Greece defender Georgios Tzavellas. The Belgian tried to grab Tzavellas’ nose once, but the defender was able to evade his fingers, so Mertens—being the weirdo that he is—decided to give it another go. Tzavellas wasn’t having it, though. You would think that having a stranger be nice enough to make sure you don’t have anything dangling out of your nose would at least get a “thank you,” but apparently not.

Mertens was booked for this, but Tzavellas was eventually sent off in the final minutes of the match, which ended 1–1.


https://upscri.be/16bb19/

Greek match begins with sit-down protest over migrant deaths

Immediately after the opening kickoff in a match between Greek second-division sides AEL Larissa and Acharnaikos, all 22 players sat down on the pitch for an eerie two-minute protest.

From Reuters:

As the crowd waited for the match to start all 22 outfield players — as well as coaches, officials and substitutes — sat down for two minutes in respect of the hundreds of refugees who have died trying to escape conflict or persecution in countries like Syria and Iraq.

Twenty-four people attempting to cross to Europe from Turkey drowned when their boat sank off a Greek island on Thursday.

When the players rose back to their feet, their gesture was celebrated with respectful applause.

These types of protests always make for powerful images.

Greek stretcher bearers toss time waster around, inspire team to comeback win

Down a goal to visiting Ergotelis in their second half of their Greek second division match, all of AE Larissa began to get a little impatient. Even their stretcher bearers. So when Ergotelis’ Leonardo Koutris went down with an injury in the 66th minute, there were suspicions that he might be faking it to waste time.

The fans whistled and the stadium’s stretcher bearers tried to hurry him off the pitch as quickly as possible, so the match could continue. In doing so, they dumped Koutris onto the stretcher without warning and tried to carry him while running. This proved difficult, however, causing one of the stretcher bearers to fall and drop Koutris in the process. Then, while trying to pick the player back up, he fell again, causing him to drive his head into Koutris’ midsection.

Finally, they got him off to the side with everyone a little worse for wear. Though Koutris seemed more concerned with complaining to the ref and trying to be as much of a dead weight as possible as he was being unceremoniously hauled off, perhaps indicating that he wasn’t actually hurt, he was substituted after this, so who knows.

But the uncoordinated effort from the stretcher bearers did inspire AE Larissa, as they scored twice in the final minutes of the game to win 2-1.

Backheel from distance sets up impressive volley in Greek match

Moments of perfection can occur at many different levels of the game and Greek amateur club Thyamis Kastriou proved this in their recent 4-0 win over Asteras Parapotamou.

The volley into the top corner of the net is wonderful enough, but the fact that it’s set up by a perfectly weighted looping backheel makes it rather incredible.

Thanks to Tolis from thesprotiaball.gr for the tip!

Flare smoke creates haunting images from Greek Cup match

The quarterfinals of the Greek Cup has rivals AEK Athens and Olympiacos facing each other and the first leg was kicked off amidst an atmosphere worthy of such a menace-filled encounter. Smoke from the multitude of flares lit throughout Olympiacos’ Karaiskasis Stadium filled the air and settled over the pitch, making it look like the match was being played in some kind of eerie netherworld.

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