Kostas Choumis


Kostas Choumis was a Greek-Romanian football player who played as a striker. He is often regarded in Greece and Romania as one of the greatest strikers in the 1930s.

Club career

Kostas Choumis made his senior debut in 1933, playing for Ethnikos Piraeus, a team from his hometown. Shortly after his debut, he became a certainty for the starting lineup. He won the South Division championship with Ethnikos Piraeus in 1934–1935 season, scoring 15 goals in 10 matches. The National championship was not held in 1934–1935 season, but the next year it was played and Choumis became the top scorer of the league, with 12 goals scored in 14 matches.
In 1936, Kostas moved to Romanian club Venus Bucureşti, after scoring two goals against Romania a year earlier. He played his first match in Divizia A against Telefoane Bucureşti.
He remains in history as the first scorer for a Romanian team in the European competitions, scoring the first goal of Venus Bucureşti in the First Round of 1937 Mitropa Cup, against Ujpest FC from Hungary. The match was lost by Venus, 4–6, with Choumis scoring also the last goal of the Romanian team.
Kostas Choumis won three times the Divizia A champion title, but did not win the Romanian Cup. He played in the last three matches of the 1940 Romanian Cup final, when, after two replays of the final Rapid Bucureşti won the third replay and the final.
He remained at Venus during World War II and in the first season after it, but left the team in 1947 to play at Karres Mediaş, where he played a season along Ştefan Dobay. He played for the Mediaş-based team until 1950, and, after a short spell at IT Arad, he retired from the playing career.

International career

Kostas Choumis made his debut for the Greece national football team in December 1934, in a Balkan Cup match against Yugoslavia. A few days later, in a match against Romania, Kostas scored his first international goal.
In May 1935, in another Balkan Cup match against Romania, Choumis scored two goals and caught the eye of the Romanian club Venus Bucureşti. In his last match for Greece, he scored the only goal for his team in Cairo, but the Greeks lost the game against Egypt.
In 1941, after five years of living in Romania, Kostas made his debut for Romania, in a match against Slovakia. He scored the first goal for The Tricolours, and Romania won 3–2.
His last international match came in June 1943, playing another match against Slovakia. The match ended as a draw, 2-2.

International Goals

#DateVenueOpponentScoreResultCompetition
127 December 1934Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium, Athens, Greece2-22-2Balkan Cup
216 June 1935Unak Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria1-02-5Balkan Cup
316 June 1935Unak Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria2-52-5Balkan Cup
424 June 1935Levski Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria1-02-2Balkan Cup
524 June 1935Levski Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria2-02-2Balkan Cup
621 May 1936ONEF Stadium, Bucharest, Romania2-34-5Balkan Cup
719 June 1936Muhammad Ali Stadium, Cairo, Egypt1-11-3Friendly

#DateVenueOpponentScoreResultCompetition
112 October 1941ANEF Stadium, Bucharest, Romania1-13-2Friendly

Honours

Club

;Ethnikos Piraeus
;Venus Bucureşti
;UTA Arad