The Greece national football team represents Greece in international football and is controlled by the Hellenic Football Federation. Greece spent most of their history in relative obscurity, having participated only twice in the final tournaments of the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship, in 1994 and 1980 respectively, until UEFA Euro 2004, when Greece became European champions in only their second participation in the tournament. The Greeks, dismissed as rank outsiders before the tournament with bookmakers giving odds of between 80–1 to 150–1 for them to win, defeated some of the favourites in the competition including defending champions France and hosts Portugal, who Greece beat in both the opening game of the tournament and the second in the final.
Since that victory Greece have occupied a place in the top 30 of the FIFA World Rankings for all but 2 months, and reached a high of 8th from April to June 2008. Furthermore, the team attracts large numbers of fans not only at home matches, a rare phenomenon in the previous years, but even when they play abroad. For instance, a friendly clash between Australia and Greece in 2006 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in Melbourne, Australia, set a stadium attendance record for association football attracting 95,103 fans, some of whom originated from the large Greek Australian community.
Source : Wikipedia.com
