OMONOIA Square is a hive of activity. Cars, motorcycles and buses whizz around the square’s grand water foundations showing scant regard for the highway code.
The heat is stifling. The service in the restaurants dotted around the square is slow but friendly. And you can spot the pale-skinned Irishman a mile away.
While passions always run high for the club scene in Athens, the national team is more of a slow burner for the locals, with match tickets still available for Friday’s Euro 2024 qualifier with the Republic of Ireland at the brand new 32,000 OPAP stadium – the sacred ground and home to AEK Athens roughly five miles north of Omonoia Square.
If Gus Poyet, the manager of Greece, has any designs on pushing Group B favourites France and Holland all the way to the end of this condensed qualification campaign, they must beat the Irish.
It’s exactly the same scenario for the visitors. They must beat the Greeks to stand any chance of pinching one of the two automatic qualification berths in Group B.
Both Poyet and Stephen Kenny run the gauntlet in Athens on Friday evening – a game expected to be played in 23-degree heat.
It goes without saying but international football is the most scrutinised the world over. No other games are picked apart quite like qualifiers probably because they only come around every few months.
The national media get giddy during international windows. There must be talking points. There must be managers on the cusp.
We must grab the attention of readers, so there always seems a sharper edge to the various narratives surrounding an international manager and his players.
Everything about these windows is ruthless.
It's undoubtedly a hard place to prove yourself. Often, managers, coaches and players have only a couple of days together to work on formations and set plays and to build morale. And everything is studied with a fine-tooth comb.
It's fair to say Stephen Kenny has managed to hold the attention of Irish football fans up and down the country since he was promoted to the senior role right in the middle of a global pandemic.
The affable 51-year-old Dubliner holds our attention because his press briefings can be engaging. Kenny has always been prepared to discuss formations and players' skill-sets in a very candid manner.
Top table press conferences are notoriously staid affairs but Kenny's conversations with the media are usually free from sound bites and they generally enhance the football discourse of the day.
That doesn't mean he has unanimous approval among supporters though.
You will have your League of Irelanders who are staunch supporters of Kenny, probably because he came through the grassroots and made his way to the top job in the country.
The ex-pros are quite sceptical in general, while ex-boss Brian Kerr - another member of the blue-collar football tradition in Ireland - has, rather surprisingly, been a vociferous critic of his fellow Dubliner.
The Irish media - the ones who attend the vast majority of the manager's press conferences - are divided; if not split down the middle, perhaps 70-30 in favour of the Stephen Kenny project.
It's probably credit to the manager in, I suppose, a grudging sense that there is a significant proportion of Irish football followers still undecided about the national team manager after all this time.
Kenny has tried to modernise the Irish national team and has got as far away as possible from the quite austere football philosophies practised by Giovanni Trapattoni, Martin O'Neill and Mick McCarthy.
Who wants to go back to those days of 4-4-2, strikers chasing lost causes for 90-plus minutes, hoping to win a free-kick near the opposition's penalty area and backing Richard Dunne to find the net with a last-minute header?
But, of course, it's not a zero-sum equation as is sometimes assumed.
If Kenny fails to make it through this campaign - undoubtedly the defining one of his international career - it doesn't necessarily mean the FAI go back to the so-called tried-and-trusted and awful-to-watch football method of the past.
Lee Carsley's name keeps popping up in various journals. The former Republic of Ireland midfielder has been forging a very impressive coaching reputation for himself with England's underage teams and ticks a lot of the modern coach boxes.
Possession, however, is still 10-tenths of the law and Kenny can remain in the role should the squad continue to improve and grow under his watch.
Whether the manager cares to admit it or not, 12 months ago they lost 1-0 away to modest Armenia in Yerevan and the squad's preparation was open to criticism because they started to wilt in the last 20 minutes of that game.
June fixtures are always full of pitfalls. Given the learnings of Yerevan, nothing has been left to chance for Friday's tricky assignment in Athens.
To manage the awkward bridge between the end of the club season and June qualifiers, the Republic of Ireland squad has had training camps in Bristol and enjoyed over a week of warm-weather training in Antayla, Turkey.
It's the kind of preparation that wouldn't look out of place for a major tournament.
A defeat in Athens would be disastrous for the Irish and would cast an unforgiving light on the progress or otherwise that's being made under Kenny.
There have been some really encouraging periods under Kenny.
Home and away to Portugal. The tempo the Irish played with against Ukraine in Lodz. Drawing with Belgium. Ruthlessly despatching Scotland at the Aviva. The game-plan that almost worked against the illustrious French back in March.
The wheels have threatened to come off, though, just as regularly as those good displays. Losing to Luxembourg. Wilting against Armenia.
The lack of leadership when stress tests presented themselves against Armenia and Latvia, both at home.
Kenny's three-year reign can be categorised as two steps forward, sometimes two steps back.
What the manager needs in Athens on Friday night is a more confident stride from his team and showing that in times of adversity within games they are beginning to handle the pressure better.
