When he was 15 years old, Victor Klonaridis was living in Uganda, had never been part of a formal club soccer team and was playing the game only for fun with his friends at school.
But within three years, he was scoring goals in Greece’s Super League in his first of two stints with legendary Greek side AEK Athens. And he would go on to suit up for two other famed premier division clubs; Lille of France and Panathinaikos of Greece.
Just five years ago, Klonaridis also competed in UEFA Champions League against Bayern Munich, and Ajax, and scoring against Celtic, Benfica (twice in the same game) and Hungary’s Vidi. He’s netted six goals in 32 career European international games and 55 goals in 283 games for seven high-level clubs games in four different countries.
As of this week make that eight clubs and five countries.
Forge FC signed Klonaridis just as Canadian Premier League rosters froze last Friday.
He won’t play Saturday in Vancouver but is likely to see field time in the following weekend’s crucial home match against visiting York United FC.
Somehow it has flown under the national Canadian soccer radar that Forge FC has signed a significant attacking player who arguably has enjoyed more elite success than any previous CPL new arrival.
“I might be 32 now but I believe I have a lot of football in me, and from my agents, I’ve heard a lot about how the coach works here and how he really helps the players progress,” Klonaridis says. “And I still believe I can progress as a football player.”
“I wanted to see something new, experience a new country, a new type of football. This league is just in its beginning but I remember how MLS in the beginning was small and look at it now. I believe the same thing is going to happen to this league. That’s why I was really interested in coming here.”
While he is fully aware that Forge FC has prospered at boosting the development of the likes of Kwasi Poku, Woobens Pacius and Tristan Borges then landing solid fees as they’ve transferred to other leagues, Klonaridis says that wasn’t his motivation.
“Getting sold back in Europe sounded really good but my goal coming here isn’t to go back to Europe,” he said. “I’ve never been in North America before and playing in a new market I found interesting.”
There is a long-standing connection between Forge and Belgium, where the Hammers have established several club and coach relationships and Greece, Bobby Smyrniotis’s family’s homeland, where he coached in the Olympiacos academy system.
“We were looking at players who were free in the market and obviously the Greek market is something I know very well,” Smyrniotis says. “We were looking during the summer to see which players were looking for teams, which to keep track of. He’s one I was watching and knew his game well. We have the same agent, Nick Mavromaras of Axia Sports, and as things went on and weren’t materializing for him we had constant discussions.
“He blends two very important things: skill on the ball and speed. And he has power. I think that can go well in our league and it’s also something I think we need on our team.
“He can stretch the field and provide a different kind of attack for our guys and that’s what we hope he can bring in these final few games.”
Klonaridis was born in Belgium to a Belgian mother and a Greek father but the family soon moved to Uganda, where his father still works in the tobacco industry.
He was a soccer prodigy with raw talent but says now that things probably progressed far too quickly for him during his teens.
With no pathway to good training as he was growing up in Uganda, he was fifteen-and-a-half when he bet on himself and left for Greece. With the help of his cousin, he contacted numerous clubs and two months later AEK Athens called back to say there was a try-out camp coming up.
“There were 22 players and they played a trial game,” he said. “I couldn’t speak Greek so everybody before me chose their position and because I didn’t know what was going on, they put me at centre back. We played on half the field and the play was really tight because there was no space. As a centre back I had a lot of time on the ball. I could drive the ball, I could play 1-2, and I believe that God opened it up for me because if I was in another position there would be no space to show my qualities.
“So they took me as a stopper but they realized I was not a stopper and put me at right backer, then I went midfielder, No. 6, and then because of my speed, they put me on the wing and at striker. “
He soon signed his first professional contract and was called up to play some games with the senior side at 18, scoring his first goal against Panathinaikos, for whom he’d later play five seasons and score 18 goals.
Just before his 20th birthday, he was sold to Lille for what today would be worth about $1.2 million Canadian.
“To be honest I think it was too big a step for me,” Klonaridis says bluntly.
“I was not ready mentally, or physically, to take such a big step. I’d only played a few games professionally in Greece and I went to Lille where they had players like Salomon Kalou (93 caps and 27 goals for Ivory Coast).“
“I was, ‘What am I doing here?’ It was tough, which is why I needed to come back to Greece.”
Klonaridis returned to Panathinaikos who paid AEK Athens over a million Euros for the transfer, spent the next five years there, with a 13-game stop in Lens, then returned to AEK Athens in the summer of 2017. He was an integral part of their run into the Champions League that season with goals in the qualifying round against Celtic, and then Vidi, and a brace in the group stage against Benfica to overcome a 2-0 deficit before the Portuguese side won by a goal
He says that of the dozens of goals he’s scored, the one that gives him the warmest feeling was the winner against Celtic in the Champions League qualifying round, and holds out his right arm to show the goosebumps rising:
“It was at Celtic Park and the atmosphere was the best I’ve ever experienced. You tried to talk to your teammate on the field who was only a metre away and you could not hear him. I’m getting the chills right now as we talk about it.”
He suffered from injury problems and a lack of consistency and left Athens in July of 2020, to play in Cypress, then it was back to Greece with Altromitos, followed by time in Turkey and a short stint in the Greek second tier before he began looking around for a new club, and finding Forge.
Smyrniotis points out that he was still showing well in the European leagues and that his skill pool was evident. But Klonaridis is quite forthright about not fulfilling all of his early promises, and why.
“The biggest issues I had when I was younger, until the age of 25 or 26, was my mind. I was weak, let’s say,” he says. “I didn’t understand what was going on.
“Now that I’m 32 I understand how much the mind plays into football. If you’re not strong enough in your mind, if you think too much, if you worry too much about not playing well… it affected my play too much. You get on the field at game time, you feel stuck. You get the ball and you’re not free, so you don’t know what to do.
“You’re always thinking. Not about the money, about what happens if I don’t perform. In training my coach would say ‘come on you’re an amazing player’ and it was just not coming some games. This was my biggest weakness — my mind; because I had the speed I had the quality, I had the power. But my mind was not right. That’s what held me back.
“I realized as I got older that the most important thing is to first work your brain. It all happens in the mind. Work your mind like you work your body.”
That’s his mentality now and he feels he can put that knowledge to use, not just for himself, but for his new team on the pitch and his teammates in the locker room.
And while he’s been in Hamilton only a few days, he likes what he sees in the calibre of play in practice and what he sees and hears off the field.
“It was a surprise to me because I believe the world has lost a lot of respect,” he says. “But everyone on the street here always says ‘Good morning, how are you?’ And there’s a variety of backgrounds on this team: you’re hearing English, French, Spanish, Greek.”
All of which he speaks himself.
Klonaridis’s preferred position is striker, although he can and will play any number of roles. With scorer Terran Campbell still nursing injury he can provide extra strength up front, and feels he can get behind the defence to unleash his heavy shot.
“I think the biggest thing for him is he wants a good football home, a place where he can focus on his football and not some of the stuff that went on in his last couple of clubs in the Greek Super League,” Smyrniotis says.
“That’s what we provide here. We provide that stability and we provide the ability to compete for a trophy. And we give him a new environment.”