It’s been a while since I took my camera to a game, and that’s because, in the past few weeks, I’ve mostly been to grounds I’ve already covered. But today, I was set on ticking off a new one. While looking at Sunday’s matches, I saw that Pefki, a team I had been wanting to visit for a while, was playing against Psychiko, a side I admittedly have a sympathy for. What’s more, the season is slowly coming to an end, and Psychiko are top of the league, but not by a mile, so today’s game would definitely not be an indifferent one for them.

Pefki is a nice, small, quiet, residential area in the northern suburbs of Athens. Their small ultras group maintains a friendship with the ones from the neighbouring area of Maroussi and is bitter rivals with their other neighbours, Lykovrisi.

The walk from the station was quite pleasant, and as I got close to the ground, I was met with some small graffiti made by the ultras. I took a seat at the only stand, which was pretty much full (though rather small), and observed the surroundings as I waited for the game to start. Pefki in Greek means pine tree, and the area’s stadium does justice to this name, as it’s quite literally surrounded by them.

The home side’s young lot welcomed their team with a nice little pyro show, though they didn’t bother to sing any chants at all throughout the game, which I found a bit odd. I had sat behind some school kids whose conversation topics ranged from the national team’s recent performance to stealing Psychiko’s fans' banner. Unsurprisingly, they never made a move.

The game kicked off, and it didn’t take long for the leaders of the table to open the scoring. Pefki came very close to equalising with a shot that was saved on the line by Psychiko’s defender, but after a few minutes, the latter’s centre forward dribbled the whole team before scoring once more. Psychiko managed to score a third just before the whistle blew, effectively securing the win.

During half-time, I was surprised to see an old schoolmate of mine, and upon greeting him, I was even more surprised to find out that his best friend, who I used to play football with in our school’s team, is the centre back of Psychiko; I would never have noticed.

I sat with him in the second half, which was far less exciting with the match pretty much decided. We spoke a bit about school and eventually celebrated the last goal that shaped the final score. The game finished, I congratulated my old schoolmate for his performance, and headed home to catch the national team’s match on TV, reflecting on the analysis made by the young hooligans of Pefki during the first half…