Former Manning Rangers and Bafana Bafana striker George Koumantarakis reflected on his family moving from Greece to South Africa.
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What's the story?
Retired striker George Koumantarakis sat down on a podcast to chat about his family's immigration to South Africa and the challenges he faced at that time.
Koumantarakis won the league with Manning Rangers and represented Swiss giants FC Basel and English outfit Preston North-End, making 12 caps for Bafana Bafana.
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George's journey from Greece to SA
Former Manning Rangers striker George Koumantarakis recently spoke about how his family immigrated to South Africa, a move that started with him and his father.
The Athens-born Durbanite mentioned to podcaster, Thabang UncleBlaque, how beautiful it was for him to come to South Africa at such a young age, despite battling with the language barrier at first.
"I came [to South Africa] at six-years-old. My parents wanted to immigrate to South Africa and at that stage, I was the only one that came to the country with my father, because we couldn't really afford to fly the whole family down," revealed the 49-year-old.
"It was beautiful to come here at a young age, I couldn't speak the language, I couldn't speak English at all. So, I was put into a pre-primary school and obviously the only thing I could do, from a young age, was play soccer and that's how I made my first friends," says Koumantarakis on his first years in Mzansi.
The ex-baller emphasised his growing pains in a new environment as a child: "My father had to pick me up on the first day [of pre-school] because I got into a fight, I couldn't communicate.
"I only lasted two hours of my first day before he had to come and pick me up. He obviously spoke to me and said: 'look, you've got to be a little bit calmer and try and learn the language and adapt. But that's the story of a young immigrant coming to South Africa, but you know, people in South Africa are very welcoming to it was actually pretty easy to settle in," he added.
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It's been almost two decades since Koumantarakis hung up his boots and has lived a rather comfortable life after football, working hard to attain a BCom Law qualification.
He's used his degree to explore various business interests and was last known to have a directorial position at an international company, Logan Golf.
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