The first league in which I’m going to try and find a team to support is Superleague Greece. Founded in 1927, 16 teams compete for the championship, but historically, only 3 can win. Only 6 times has a Greek champion come from outside of the three dominant powers of Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, and AEK Athens. The last time that happened was 1988. Throughout this, I will try to avoid choosing the most dominant teams in each league, but I make no promises. So in descending order of my choice, lets look at the 16 teams.

AEK Athens F.C.

Founded: 1924

Nicknames: Dikefalos Aetos (English: Double-Headed Eagle), Kitrinomavroi (English: Yellow-Blacks)

11 Time Greek League Champions(Last in 1994)

14 Time Greek Cup Winners(Last in 2011)

AEK was founded by a group of Constantinopolitan refugees in 1924.  A large group of their fanbase are descendants from Constantinopolitan refugees. Their most successful period came in the 60s-70s, winning the league 5 times and the cup 3 times. This was in conjunction with the arrival Dimitris “Mimis” Papaioannou, who would go on to score 234 goals in 481 appearances for AEK.  He also may have sung their club anthem, but no YouTube footage confirms this.  Their second great period happened in the late 80s-early 90s, which again coincided with the prime of a club legend, Stelios Monolas.  Monolas retired in 2000, after making 700 appearances.  When did he make his debut you ask? NINTEEN SEVENTY EIGHT. Dude captained AEK for 19(!) years.

Pros

• Pretty great crest
• Their training center is in Sparta
• Despite being on of the biggest teams in Greece, they’re not too bandwagony
• Stelios Monolas sounds awesome

Cons

• Despite the crest, the nicknames are no fun
• Still fairly bandwagony though

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I’ve already begun writing my first post choosing my first team, but I wanted to write this quickly to just add some quick notes. I will not be choosing a team in any of the major leagues of Europe or the MLS. I already spoke of my love for Aston Villa and Bayern Munich in the last post. I also have developed several other strong connections over the past few seasons.

-Me on Twitter

In the past few years I’ve grown to be a big fan of football/soccer. I try to consume as much as I can, but like many people in the world I’ve sort of became stuck on the English Premier League.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  And it’s not 100% true.  Hell, I watched the full 90 minutes of the Coupe de France final with Lyon and Quevilly and loved it. (Even though it wasn’t a particularly great game.)

I claim to be a fan of Bayern Munich, but I can say for an absolute fact that I don’t watch as many Bayern matches that I should.  The only team I can say that I rarely ever miss a match of, is Aston Villa.  And that’s been fucking terrible this season.

So what I’m trying to do with this blog is, specifically, find a team to support in as many football leagues around the world, as humanly possible.  But also try and get myself more engrossed into leagues other than the Premier League.

I certainly can’t say that I will keep up with whatever Moldovan team I end up picking.  But hopefully I, and anyone out there reading this, can find out something funny or interesting about them along the way.  Because hopefully this will be fun and not absurdly stupid.