How the Volos Refugees’ Sports Club became Niki Volou FC

The arrival of the refugees and the establishment of refugee sports associations changed the face of Greek sports. Refugee sports associations were originally an aspect of refugee self-organisation, but soon became vital parts of refugee identity. Most of the sports associations that evolved into professional sports clubs and became known throughout the country were based in the two major urban centres, Athens and Thessaloniki: AEK, Panionios, Apollon Athinon (also known as Apollon Smyrnis), PAOK, Apollon Kalamarias. But among them, there is also one football team from Magnisia; Niki Volou, based in Nea Ionia.

Originally founded as Volos Refugees’ Sports Club in August 1924, its establishment coincides almost exactly with that of Nea Ionia itself. The association’s objective was ‘to promote and popularize exercising among refugees of all social classes’. Initially, it was known by the name ‘The Refugee Team’ and the players wore yellow and black. Two years later, the club changed its name to ‘Niki’ Sports Club and amended its charter to eliminate all references of the word ‘refugee’. The team replaced black and yellow with white and blue. The purpose of these changes was to facilitate the integration of Asia Minor refugees into Greek society and neutralise any differences between the refugees and local communities. However, the team drew both its supporters and athletes almost exclusively from the neighbourhood of Nea Ionia. It may sound cliché, but the Niki Volou Sports Club became synonymous with Nea Ionia; a constitutional element in the construction of its inhabitants’ refugee identity.

The Niki Volou Sports Club became associated mostly with its football division, since football acquired a massive following in the interwar period both as sport and as spectacle. Ever since its first years of operation, the sports club ran divisions for swimming and athletics, with basketball, volleyball and cycling added after the Second World War. But it was the successes of the football team on the national level that bolstered the integration of Niki Volou into the Nea Ionia refugee identity. Since its inception and until recently, its football players came almost exclusively from the neighbourhoods of Nea Ionia. According to Giorgos Karailios, a football player who played for Niki Volou and spoke to Dimitris Karagiorgos, ‘the 1958-1963 crop of players was really strong. Amazing players, sons of Nea Ionia one and all, except for Tzinis who was from Ano Volos and that’s why we called him “the foreigner”. After the end of the German occupation, the team dominated the Thessalian tournaments, and ended up competing in the first division of the Greek national league from 1961 to 1966. Later, it continued playing in the second and third divisions for years. In 2014, it was again promoted to the highest division of the Greek national league for a year.’

Niki Volou FC was also one of the few teams to have its own football stadium since quite early in its history. It was originally a plot of land on the intersection of Maiandrou Street and Ikaron Street, next to the current stadium of Niki Volou. Around 1930, the land was bought by Agamemnon Bakoulakis, the president of the club at the time. Bakoulakis granted the land to the club and agreed to be paid off in installments. The club was unable to keep up with payments and ownership of the land reverted to Bakoulakis who then sold it. In 1938, the National Bank leased the team an exchangeable plot of land where the team’s stadium is located to this day. However, the land was then bought in auction by the Tobacco Workers’ Housing Association with a view to building residences for its members. The buyout of the Niki Volou stadium, the only football stadium in Volos at the time, was plagued with problems and delays for years. Eventually, in 1956, Niki Volou FC bought another exchangeable plot of land which it then ceded to the Tobacco Workers’ Housing Association in exchange for its stadium. Known as ‘The Cage’, due to the close proximity of the seats to the football ground, the stadium is still in the same location on Maiandrou Street today.

Being inextricably linked with the refugee identity, Niki Volou FC was often treated with hostility by a fraction of the local football fans. When Olympiakos Volou was established in 1937, a local rivalry was born, encompassing stereotypical dualities, like natives-refugees, strong-weak, privileged-disadvantaged, rich-poor. This rivalry often devolved into hooliganism and was exploited by powerful actors for personal financial gain, phenomena which are common in Greek football in general. Its effects might not be as intense now, but this rivalry and the disparities it encapsulates still define Niki Volou FC, and by extension the entire Nea Ionia, just like the refugee and political identity of many football teams in Greece might shift and change, while still retaining elements of their history.