The minute Sotirios Kyrgiakos touched down at Sydney Airport, you could tell he was happy with his decision to sign up to a second tier Aussie team.
Looking a little bit tired from his flight, he was quickly snapped up by young fans keen to say hello, obliging with a couple of photos.
Now, after about six days getting used to the atmosphere at Sydney Olympic, Kyrgiakos is about to play for the first time in Australia wearing an Australian jersey.
Sunday is game day for Olympic, and they couldn’t have picked a better fixture to début Kyrgiakos. They go up against a powerful Blacktown Spartans who managed the biggest upset last week when they demolished one of the best teams, Sutherland, 6-1.
It will be a bit of a grudge match as a handful of players now playing for the Spartans called Olympic home just a couple of months back.
The fallout from coach Peter Tsekenis walkout is still a touchy issue, but at least it will make for a interesting match.
“It’s going to be a very physical battle,” Olympic coach Grant Lee tells Neos Kosmos.
“They had a fantastic win first up, but in saying that they played at their home ground which is a very small pitch and that suits them and they’re very physical teams so they probably out muscled Sutherland.”
Lee has at least a spanner in the works with Kyrgiakos, and he says training has been amazing with the former Liverpool player.
“He’s integrated himself very well into the squad, helping a lot of the young boys with their game, he’s offering advice all the time, he wants to train, he’s not one of those athletes that are a bit special, can’t do this, can’t do that,” he says.
Lee, a former Socceroo himself, has been quite proud seeing the 34-year-old pulling aside young players and giving them individual advice as training goes on.
The only pet peeve is that he wishes Kyrgiakos was at the club for longer.
He’s only booked for two matches, enough to make a small mark but not enough to make lasting changes to the squad.
“It’s a little bit hard, he comes in for a number of games, he’s not here for a long time and we haven’t had a long time to prepare,” Lee says.
“It would be a lot easier if we had a whole pre-season with him but we have to cope with that.
“We can’t get carried away and think that he’s going to do everything on the park and we just sit back and watch; he’s just another player in the team.”
The team will be looking to capitalise on their opening 2-0 season win against Sydney United 58.
Kyrgiakos meanwhile will be using his time away from training to help with the club, running a number of coaching clinics at various levels for Olympic.
It is his first time in Australia since he was down for an international friendly between Greece and Australia.
“I briefly visited in 2006 when Greece played Australia in Melbourne,” he said.
“Although just a friendly match I will never forget nearly 100,000 people at the stadium that night and the amount of support we had from the Greek Australians.”