Last Sunday, 7 December 2014, a sunny and a lucky day, witnessed the glory of the football team of our Business Confucius Institute (BCI): we won the championship of the First Chinese-Greek Football Tournament!

That was the finals of the tournament held on the green of the Renti Football Club, starting at 3 o’clock p.m. between the BCI Team and the Allied Team of the Shipping Companies.

Alexandros Paronis, a BCI player of just 14 years old, with his clever dribbles and instant response to passes from highly determined teammates, shot and achieved the first two magnificent goals. In the first half, the match showed a more or less evident advantage in our favor but, in the second half, despite a third goal achieved by Gai Bochen, one of our Chinese players, the Allied Team managed to shoot two goals in return when the game had about ten minutes to go. But finally, the whistle blew, announcing a final score of 3 to 2. What an exciting game!
In the former group matches, the BCI team had come across powerful opponents and experienced tough and fierce moments, but finally survived in Group A and entered the finals with the Shipping Team from Group B. Our team won the first match on November 23, with a score of 7 to 2 and, on November 30, beat the Red Star Team 2 to 1 in the second fight.

Now holding the silver cup of championship high up, we are happy to name our warriors with their respective achievements as follows:
George Orfanides (B2 Class, 3 scores); Alexandros Paronis (A2 Class, 3 scores), Gai Bochen (BCI secretary, 3 scores), Ioannis Stratigopoulos (A4 Class, 2 scores), Nikolaos Ypsilantis (B1 Class, 1 score). All the other members, i.e., Ioannis Besis (B4 Class), George Konstantinidis (C1 Class), Polymeros Konstantinos (A4 class), and Peter Wu (local Chinese teacher), have also contributed greatly to our final triumph with their fine sportsmanship as well as exquisite skill.

A special mention should be made of Maximos Stampoulidis (E Class), our goal keeper. Many a time have the spectators stood amazed by this young man, sometimes as light as a swallow and sometimes as ferocious as a leopard, who warded off the shooting ball again and again. No wonder why he deserves the name of a superstar!

Let us remember the victory with all these names! Let us wait for more in the future!