Apollon Pontou

The club they put together in January 1926 took the name Apollon Kalamarias. Red for the blood spilled in the expulsion, black for the mourning that followed — the club still answers to Pontioi, the Pontians, more readily than to any official title.

For most of a century the club stayed a fixture of the Greek lower divisions rather than the top flight: three titles in the Beta Ethniki, four in the Gamma Ethniki, and never quite carrying the club higher for long. Dimitris Toboulidis made 233 appearances in that grind through the First National Division between 1976 and 1994.

In 2017, with Alex Kalas by then in charge of the professional side, the club dropped the Kalamarias name for Apollon Pontou — even as the amateur wing kept the old name for itself.

Through it all Kalamaria itself, the Thessaloniki suburb built largely by refugee families, has stayed the constant. The old Kalamaria Stadium, still owned by the amateur section and holding 6,500, sat empty of the first team for two seasons while the pros played out of borrowed grounds in Neapoli and Kilkis.