Early Life
Samaras was born on 21 February 1985 in Heraklion, the capital city of the Greek island of Crete. His favourite footballer growing up was Marco van Basten. Samaras was also a keen basketball fan and his father, Ioannis Samaras, often let him stay up until the early hours of the morning so he could watch his other hero, Michael Jordan.
In 1994, when he was 10 years old, Samaras joined his boyhood heroes, OFI Crete. His father was playing for them at the time and then retired in 1996. Six months later, he became Academy chief manager, a position he retained up, until 2000, when he became manager. Samaras credits his father highly with helping start his football career. His influence meant that Samaras trained every day of his childhood and he also got to spend a lot of time behind the scenes at OFI. Samaras left for Dutch club Heerenveen in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Georgios Samaras
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