That’s how it started “El Sombrero” a group of football fans who find the most unlikely and unbelievable stories born from the “king of sports” to tell with seething emotions. It started 15 years ago as blog and then translated his stories into Facebook, which now has 150,000 subscribers. Before book he wrote in a sombrero.

In a way, this was probably the beginning for all those who love football without fear, but with great passion. Either they saw Messi on TV, or their village team, or older guys in Alans with homemade baseball caps. The second happened to Akis Katsuda who remembers how, as a child, he went with his mother and brother to his games Ari Malesiadas. He brought these memories of provincial amateur football from the mountainous village of Etoloakarnania to Athens and started three years ago. “Football”, an independent publication with which he travels around Greece so that through football he can direct his lens and pen to all those teams and people who remain “invisible”.

At the moment, the fifth issue of “Football” is “in print” and will be released in February. However, when he started the project all alone, Akis Katsudas was full of innocence and excitement, but completely unaware of the danger, as he tells me, “Basically, I had no idea how to design it, print it, nothing. I only knew that I wanted my photographs and texts from my trips to be printed.” As he explains, he definitely didn’t want to create another football website.

Even if he himself today, with his more experienced eyes, sees errors in the old issues of his journal, the result justifies him. On the pages of Football you will read and see from the last stadium before the Albanian border while its faithful members Muher Libre, one of the few women’s football associations in Greece.

Scrolling the other way to “El Sombrero”, beyond the football definition of a sombrero and… quote: “President Edessaikos” you will succeed stolen Munch paintings by Norwegian players and records of the ever British defender vinnie jones, which most moviegoers are probably familiar with Guy Ritchie’s “Two Smoking Cans”. But his photographs “Around the World with a Sombrero” in which El Sombrero’s team book honors him with the title in various venues and stadiums around the world.

“El Sombrero” begins to write about all the ramifications that the sport has and give rise to stories in which often football “is just an excuse”, they did not expect that after so many years they have achieved such attractiveness. “As it turns out, there are still several thousand Greeks who like these themes and this approach to the game,” they comment. After all, “thanks to their own support and cooperation, we continue even after so many years and our stories have reached the shelves of bookstores, next to such great books as Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Kafka’s Trial and Jacek Gmoch’s Six Years in Hell” they will say, because no one has ever doubted their humor.

It is clear that in both cases we are dealing with “different” approach to football, away from sterile scoring and fan-made platitudes where aesthetics and human-centered storytelling are at the forefront. However, the folks at El Sombrero and Football believe that in recent years, the audience that consumes the sport in a different way is increasing, and more and more delicious work is being done around it.

Of course, Akis Katsudas points out that “the culture of football and supporters in Greece still has a long way to go to properly mature.” And he explains: “For me, not only appearance is important. Because, indeed, many people can go to the stadium and take some beautiful photos. But it is important to show with your work that there is always another side of football. Like not all fans are hooligans, like football players are people and not robots. Aesthetics, in my opinion, has a lot to do with empathy and knowledge.”

As for knowledge, he would also agree Nick Hornby from another point of view. The author of High Fidelity, before falling in love with music, was in love with Arsenal all his life and once wrote in his autobiography: “Fever Field”: “A lot of what I know about parts of Britain and Europe comes from football pages, and I have a sociological flavor to hooliganism. I learned how important it is to invest time and emotions in things that I cannot control by becoming part of a community whose aspirations I fully and uncritically share.

However, if football has taught us anything so far, it is to “live with injustice”, as Jurgen Spock of El Sombrero says. Why, football seems to be for him “research on injustice” all those moments when you “lose from one phase a game in which you were clearly better than your opponent or where a lot depends on the often wrong decision of the referee. It’s not only an integral part of the gameplay, whether you’re a fan or a gamer, not only does it not stop us from loving it, but I suspect it makes us love it even more. Maybe because the discussions around football are getting more passionate and its stories more dramatic? Because a perfectly fair world would be a bit unfair?

Maybe it was. Sports-related romance, again, never left Akis Katsuda. After all, if he loses his appetite, he will know that the cycle of “Football” is logically closed. At the moment, the exact opposite is happening: as soon as one number comes out, he puts forward the next one and takes trains, buses and ships to get to his football destination. This is how the impressions that he keeps are born … for better and for worse: for example, the incredible hospitality of his team. Corsair critics ovens, but also the return boat from Mykonos in muddy waters, which made him feel “it’s time for a second Titanic”.

Of course, “big” football gives incomparable emotions, because “the strength of the jersey is very great.” But for the man behind Futbol, ​​“amateur football stands out because its immediate heroes are our people, they are just like us. There is no such wall. Every Sunday, thousands of stadiums fill up in Greece. All of them do not go to see either the best ball on the planet or the most beautiful goals. They go to see their friend, their son, their partner play on the field.”

In every case, there is love here: “For people like us who deal with it every day, write about it and of course try to interpret it at all its levels, both as a social phenomenon that constantly creates beautiful stories through unique personalities, and as a game that constantly constantly changing and evolving, football is certainly something very important that touches the limits of true love. You don’t spend so many years doing something if you don’t like it,” admits “Gargaduaas” from El Sombrero (yes, everyone blogs under pseudonyms).

And then, maybe football here and there next to us is not so different: “You know that in any country on the planet, wherever you go, there is an old fan who has been waiting for years for his favorite team to win the championship, a child who wants to be like Messi, a sports fan who is waiting for Sunday. come to go to the field.”

And at this moment, I can’t help but think of this story written by “El Sombrero” some time ago: