Kalamaria Stadium

Kalamaria Stadium sits in the Kalamaria district of Thessaloniki, Greece. It is a quiet corner of the urban sprawl. The ground is officially known as Stadio Apollona Kalamarias, but the locals call it Kalamaria Stadium. It has been the home of Apollon Kalamarias since the club was founded in 1926.

What makes the place different is not its size, but its history. The concrete stands were erected largely through volunteer labour by the fans who funded the project. The capacity today is 6,500. The pitch is natural grass, 105m by 68m, and the running track around it is rubber.

The most significant change came in 2003, when the venue was renovated to serve as a training facility for the football tournament of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The plastic seats were installed then, and the facilities below the stand were completely redone. The stadium was officially renamed in 2023 to honour Vasilis Triantafyllidis, a former club president and comedian who died in 2018. The renaming was a gesture to his role in the club’s modernization, though administrative issues regarding a debt of €1.3 million meant the name change was limited to the existing functional stand for now.

It is a stadium for the people of Kalamaria, and that is enough.