Nikos Godas was born in 1921 in Aivali, shortly before Hellenism in western Asia Minor—and millennia of history—went up in flames. A refugee from the cradle, he first arrived as a baby in Mytilene, on the island of Lesvos, then Crete, before his family put down roots in Kokkinia, a place where poverty was the color of rust, and struggle was a way of life. Football quickly became his refuge, a way to fight without weapons, to shout out without words.
He was 17 when he donned the Olympiacos red-and-white strip for the first time, and jersey featuring the laurel-crowned youth would stay with him right to the end. Old-timers said he had something about him, something special—that he could bamboozle the opposing defense like he’d cast a spell on them. The jersey became Nikos Godas’ second skin: with the red and white on his back, he was more than just a footballer—he was the heart and soul of the team, the spark that set the team alight. People loved him because he was good… and because he played like there was no tomorrow. Maybe, deep down, he knew there wouldn’t be.
“He never gave up on the field, he didn’t give up before the firing squad. Nikos Godas is proof that some people never die – they become symbols.”
A captain in ELAS
Dead set, as ever, on mixing things up, History decreed that it wouldn’t be on the football field that Nikos Godas made his greatest mark. In 1943, when soccer balls had given way to guns and football fields to battlefields, he joined ELAS, short for the “Greek People’s Liberation Army”, the largest resistance force during Greece’s occupation in WWII. He quickly rose to the rank of captain in the 5th company in Kokkinia, where blood was shed for freedom on cobblestones and barricades.
In the battle for the Keratsini power plant, he battled with German troops just as he’d once taken on – without the bloodshed – opposing teams’ defenders. He fought as passionately as he played, because for Godas, the ball and the gun were just different ways of achieving the same thing: standing up and being counted for something bigger than himself. The events of December 1944 in the capital, a precursor to the Greek Civil War (1946-49), found him fighting in the same Piraeus streets he’d once run down with a football at his feet. “It would be nice to die here; we wouldn’t even need a grave,” he once said. And he meant it.
After the Varkiza truce brought the first phase of civil strife to an end, stricken with pneumonia and betrayed by former comrades, he was arrested and sentenced to death at the infamous Kokkinia asylum trial. In prison on the nearby island of Aegina, where hope shrank to the size of a cell, he played football with the other prisoners, because football was more than just a game for him. It was his life.
Nikos Godas, wearing a military overcoat. He joined the national resistance and rose to become a captain in the partisan army ELAS.
On November 19, 1948, when the prison guards came to take him to his place of execution, he put on his red and white jersey. He did not ask for forgiveness; he held firm, stayed proud. “I want you to execute me in my Olympiacos jersey”, he said. He asked for nothing more. There on Lazaretto, an islet just off the city of Corfu, he stood ramrod straight before the firing squad. “We Won! Long live the Olympic champions of socialism,” were his last words. A phrase that ideally summed up the two great ideas he served with his life, and his death.
“A footballer, a warrior, a legend who proved that belief in an ideal is worth more than a life.”
Michalis Anamateros
Like Nikos Godas, Michalis Anamateros wrote his own history in indelible ink. Born in 1910 in the heart of Athens, but with roots from the Cyclades Island of Naxos, he was Olympiacos’ “rough diamond”. He gave his all in attack, but he could play in any position – even between the goal posts, if the occasion called arose. A player who may not have had Godas’ finesse, he possessed something equally precious: unmatched determination.
In 1940, Anamateros stopped playing football, but didn’t stop giving his all to a struggle he believed in. He later joined ELAS during the Axis occupation of the country, becoming a unit commander and fighting hard in the battles of Athens. In the Battle of Omonia, he was behind the barricades with his comrades as they fought an unequal battle against the national army and the British troops combined. As the streets filled with smoke and bullets, there, in the shadows of Athens’ central square, Anamateros fought his final battle. He fell in December 1944. Olympiacos would never forget him.
The other ‘magicians’
The Club would never forget the many other players who gave their all for an idea. From Giorgos Darivas, a wizard on the wing, who was fated to wind up on the exile isle of Makronisos, where he wrote his own manifesto of resistance, to another Reds footballer exiled to that same inhospitable rock, the great Olympiacos goalkeeper Nikos Politis. The latter stood as tall throughout his ordeal there as he did in defending his goal line. Unwavering, he did not bow or buckle. He didn’t renounce his credo, he did not sign a document of repentance, he did not fall. Another was Dionysis Georgatos, who didn’t yield an inch during ELAS’ defense of the power plant, keeping the lights on for Athens, but also the light of hope for an entire nation. Yet another was Andreas Mouratis, nicknamed “Missouri” after the USS Missouri, since neither he nor the celebrated battleship ever shied away from a fight. Mouratis did not know the meaning of fear.
Andreas Mouratis, known as “Missouri” (left), shared Godas’ courage, and his talent. He didn’t know the meaning of fear. Neither did Michalis Anamateros (right), who may not have had Godas’ finesse, but possessed something equally precious: unmatched determination.
When the world was sucked into the maelstrom of history, these men remained steadfast, earning their place in the pantheon of Olympiacos heroes. Godas, Anamateros, Politis, Darivas, Georgatos and Mouratis are more than names on a list of war veterans. Look closely and you can see them amidst the fiery flares and billowing smoke in the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium’s stands, with the arms raised skywards, in the eyes of the youngsters kicking a ball around on a patch of Piraeus grass. Because legends never die. They keep on fighting for victory on another heavenly pitch, where two colors never ever fade: red and white.
