I don’t usually write about the big teams from Greece’s first division, as they’re already well covered. But this weekend, the local league of Volos was suspended for some obscure legal reasons regarding the licences of the region’s stadiums (?), so I thought I’d share my experience of Panathinaikos’ away match against Volos NFC.

Panathinaikos is a team that needs no introduction to anyone into football. Volos NFC (NFC standing for New Football Club), on the other hand, is a very young team, founded in 2017 by the city’s mayor. They bought the licence of a third-division club from northern Greece and quickly made their way up to the top flight, where they’re currently playing. The city of Volos is home to two well-supported and historic clubs, Olympiakos Volou and Niki Volou, but sadly this plastic club with no real history or fanbase is the one currently enjoying success. Achilleas Beos, the owner and mayor, is another reason the club isn’t popular, as he’s mostly known for his controversial statements and past match-fixing accusations.

Volos use the Panthessaliko Stadium as their home ground. It’s the biggest stadium in the city and was built ahead of the 2004 Olympic Games. It hosted a match between Greece and Mexico back then, as well as several Greek Cup finals in recent years. It has also served as the home ground for the two aforementioned clubs of the city in the past, but nowadays the stands are depressingly empty. They only fill with visiting fans whenever Volos play one of the country’s big teams, as is the case today.

A large number of Panathinaikos fans made the trip from Athens and other parts of the country despite their team’s poor form. I think the number of away fans must have been around four or five thousand. It was my third time watching this fixture in Volos and the second time in the company of my father. He’s not much into football, nor an avid supporter of any club, but the stadium is only a fifteen-minute drive from his place, so it wasn’t difficult to get him to leave the house.

We bought the cheapest tickets in the curve behind the goal — which weren’t all that cheap, really — and waited patiently in the long queue before getting in, just a few minutes before kick-off. The stands weren’t as full as when Panathinaikos played there in the 2022/23 season while chasing the title, but the turnout was still decent. Many ultras groups were present with banners and flags. In the first few minutes, they raised banners and sang in memory of Duffy, a young ultra who had tragically lost his life in a road accident a few days earlier. The cheering carried on, but the performance on the pitch didn’t quite match the excitement in the stands. Panathinaikos had some good chances, but Volos managed to score against the flow of play with a dramatic header around the 22nd minute. They created very little after that, but Panathinaikos didn’t threaten much either. The visitors controlled possession but seemed incapable of doing anything meaningful with it for the rest of the first half.

Frustration grew in the stands, but I thought things would change after the break — that the visitors would somehow wake up and put in more effort. Instead, they seemed even more nerveless as time went by. In the last twenty minutes or so, when you’d expect them to give their all, it felt as though they had already given up. The fans had every right to be upset, and chants barely came out of their lungs. Most were directed against the club’s owner, under whose management Panathinaikos haven’t won the league in thirteen years. The score remained 1–0, and as soon as the game ended, intense booing followed. The club that once thrived in the Champions League was now sitting eighth in the league table out of fourteen, while Volos had impressively climbed to fifth. I could only feel sorry for all the fans who had travelled so far just to watch their team put in such a poor performance and drift even further away from another league title.