By Nicolas Bard

“Where there is Greece” to SKAI, taking an interesting voyage to the Prefecture of Ilia, made a stop in the small village of Vineyard, eight kilometers away from Pyrgos and measures about 400 permanent residents. There he was waiting for the journalistic team of the show a surprise! The acclaimed European footballer and champion George Karagounis welcomed the journalistic staff with a smile and toured them on the streets of his village, where he grew up and threw the first balls.

He characteristically states that when he was a child, he was trying to motivate the other children of the village to go to play football, and he identifies himself as an anxious spirit.

So he made teams and the game stopped only when the sun was falling and their mothers were shouting to go home. He made his first football steps in his village team, AO Vineyard Ilias, where he was identified by Juan Ramon Roca in 1990 and urged his family to send him to Panathinaikos academies in Paiania.

Although he was a monk, his parents understood the inclination he had in football and decided to support him. A few years later he was supposed to become a great footballer, play in big teams (Inter, Benfica, Panathinaikos, Fulham) and win Euro 2004. In fact, he holds a record of Greece, with a total of 139 entries. Despite the successes he made in his history, he never forgot his homeland, the place he grew up in, and always finds time to return to the vineyard.

Today there is a stadium in the village, where the inhabitants of the village gave him his name (George Karagounis), because he comes from there, and are now aiming to create a sports center.

In closing, George Karagounis pointed out that we should always hope, and that we should never give up our dreams. Even if everything seems difficult, if we have faith and continue to work hard, in the end we will be rewarded. He is the light example: he left his home at the age of just 13 and made those dreams a reality, which when he was still going to school in the vineyard they looked crazy.