Imagine that you are 45, a former footballer, you have played in the team you have always supported, you have won titles, you have lived the glory or the money and when you have a birthday you receive wishes from one of the biggest names in Italian or world football. Doesn't that sound good? And it is.
No one, therefore, can blame him Grigoris Georgatos that he did not honor his talent with the career he had or that he did not try hard enough to live what he dreamed of as a child. Maybe, if we have to blame him for something, it's exactly that: The fact that he really tried hard to live what he dreamed of as a child.
We do not write this for his transfer to Inter in the summer of 1999, but for the fact that that of 2000 found him returning… happy to Olympic. If you see the issue as a fan, you deify it. If you look at it realistically, you think that his case belongs to what the English media call "what if?".
Because you can really wonder and have a basis - and not only… national pride as a support- what career could Georgatos have in Italy if he thought of himself as a footballer and not as a "crazy nail". If one considers this excessive, then let him attribute the same characterization to Christian Vieri.
"Happy birthday to my great teammate Georgatos, the best in the world in crosses. He helped me score a lot of goals. I love you, I send you a big hug and wishes ", the veteran Italian striker said in a video to" Geo "in 2017 for his birthday, confirming that in Milan they appreciated his talent, his value. More, for sure, than he did.
At the time when Georgatos was returning in the crazy joy of Greece, in Italy the fans of "nerazzouri" raised banners for him. During the period when he felt happy again with his friends at Olympiakos, Vieri publicly asked Cheerful Morati to bring the Greek full back to Inter. Where Grigoris shared the room in the group missions with him Ronaldo and talked about cars while training under his guidance Marcello Lippi.
"I have never seen such a job in training, so much attention to tactics or psychological preparation," he said at the time in an interview, in which, like all those he gave, he was asked to answer why he did not want to stay in Italy. which had the best championship in the world. And he was lucky to be in a team that had the… best president in the world, for footballers.
The late '90s and early' 00s were Moratti 's best years, those were the years when he could very easily gild, even literally if needed, a player to go or stay at Inter. Even from this point of view, the 400 million drachmas a year that Georgatos signed for the Milanese in 1999 (more than two decades ago) could easily have increased if he had continued as he started in Serie A.
With assists and goals, that is, making Interisti believe that they had found, after a search of years, a side back to succeed the great Andreas Breme. The difference is that the German even today, for the slightest reason, speaks with nostalgia for his years in Milan, while Georgatos felt nostalgia after just a few months for Piraeus and Greece.
Years later, he said that his good start in Serie A and the applause from everyone, teammates-fans-Press, made him feel that he lived the fame, that he proved that he can stand at this level and then, when he already had decided that what he wanted was to return to Greece, he relaxed. His performance fell, the defensive improvement that was all he needed did not come and generally showed that he wanted to leave.
His wish, as it is known, came true, to return to Inter - after being loaned to Olympiakos for a year - in the summer of 2001. With things different, however Μαρ Marcello Lippi was gone, the injuries did not allow him to find a rhythm , the world or the press was more skeptical of him and it had generally become apparent that the greatest opportunity of his career had been lost.
Grigoris Georgatos was a left back who could do magical things up front and the footballer who played in the strongest team and in the strongest league ever played by a Greek. He transferred 2,5 billion drachmas, found a teammate with some of the best in the world and some of them even remember him and send him their wishes.
Sounds really good in the end and it is. But it could be much better if he tried less for what he wanted and more for what he had to…