Sotiris Balafas was born on August 19th 1986 in Arta and comes from Chanopoulo. He started playing football at the academies of Annagenisi Arta. Then he moved to Ethnikos Filippiadas and later returned back again to Annagenisi Arta with which he first played in the professional categories the season 2004-05. His performances with Anaggenisi, in combination with his presence at the Greek National Youth teams, opened the road for his move to P.A.O.K. where he made his debut in the first team in the away defeat 1-0 from Skoda Xanthi at the premiere of the period 2005-06. During his first year with PAOK he played in 17 games without scoring. The next period he made 23 appearances and 2 goals, and the season 2007-08 he scored 3 goals in 24 games, the two of which in the local derby against Aris. During the period 2008-09 he had 21 appearances (one in the playoffs) without being able to find his way to the net, and in the summer of 2009, the existence of Pablo Garcia and Victor Vitolo in the team resulted in borrowing him to PAS Giannina in order to get participation time. There, he managed to take part in 11 league games before the end of his borrowing in January 2010. For the second half of the year, he was given on loan again, this time to Ergotelis where he played 8 games. In the summer of 2010 he returned to P.A.O.K. where he stayed until 2012, when he agreed with the Ukrainian team, Choverla. In September 2014 he returned to Greece, signing a contract with Veria, where he plays up to present day. Sotiris Balafas has been international with the National Youth teams of Greece<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sotiris Balafas was born on August 19th 1986 in Arta and comes from Chanopoulo. He started playing football at the academies of Annagenisi Arta. Then he moved to Ethnikos Filippiadas and later returned back again … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-players-gr","tag-62","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charityidols.com\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}