Greek star Sarris is enjoying the welcome mat at Accies after hell in Turkish league

“Thankfully both of those cities were quite far away from where I was based but it does have an effect on you and when you live in the more rural areas in the hinterland, that can throw up different kinds of issues.

“The further into Anatolia you go in Turkey, the more you move away f rom civilisation. You are in the vicinity of places like Syria and some of the people have minds stuck in the past, instead of being progressive.

“When I made the decision to go to Turkey, all of my life went past me in a flash and I was wondering how it would go because the people there don’t like us so much!

“Only one or two Greek players had ever been there before but I felt it was a move I needed to make if I believed in myself.

“Hardly anyone in the team spoke English so that made things a bit harder. But I was the best player, so because of that I was treated a lot better than I would have expected.

“If I had been bad, the fans would have said: ‘ He is bad – and he is Greek too!’

“I didn’t get any trouble from fans of the rival teams because I am a kind player.

“If I k ick someone by accident on the pitch I will always go over and give him the hand to get up again. So that would let them know that it is football and we are not enemies.

“But if I had acted like a Diva and just kicked people and walked away, they would be saying ‘ You are Greek and you treat me like this’. Maybe a bit of racism would have crept in then.”

Although he quickly won over his team- mates and Turkish fans in general, Sarris never felt accepted by the population at large.

He said: “I never got any trouble when I went out for a meal in Turkey but you could see in their faces sometimes if they heard me speaking Greek they were a little bit funny about me.

“I don’t understand Turkish so I didn’t know what they were saying. Maybe that was a good thing though!”

Sa r r i s was born in

“I think the presidents of AEK and the other club were friends and wanted to make this move happen without asking me first but I’d never allow that to happen to me.

“So after going for one season to Erciyesspor, I had a few different options to explore in the summer.

“Some other Turkish teams were interested in me but after all the things that were happening in the country, it wasn’t secure enough for me and my fiancee Maria, who is three months pregnant.

“I didn’t expect to get any better offers financially but I did want to play in a better league. So when Hamilton approached me for the second time, I came over to Scotland with my agent and signed for the club after two days.”

Sarris revealed he confided in a future Accies team-mate before moving to Scotland but insisted he had already made up his mind.

He added: “The only person I real ly spoke to before coming to play in Scotland was Hamilton team-mate Alex D’Acol, whom I knew from my time at AEK Athens, where we played together.

“But I would have still come to the club, even if he had said bad things.

“Georgios Samaras, who used to play as a forward for Celtic, is from the same island as me and we have friends in common but I have never spoken to him.”