Kostas Choumis (Greek: Κώστας Χούμης, Romanian: Constantin "Costică" Humis, born 20 November 1913 in Piraeus, Greece – deceased 20 July 1981 in Athens) 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 from the 1930s.
Club career
Choumis was born on 20 November 1913 in Piraeus, Greece and began playing junior-level football in 1929 at local club Ethnikos. In 1933 he made his senior debut for The Blue-Whites. He won the South Division championship with Ethnikos in the 1934–1935 season, scoring 15 goals in 10 matches. The National Championship was not held in the 1934–35 season, but in the next year it was played, and Choumis, became a top scorer alongside three other players, with 12 goals netted in 14 matches.
In 1936, Choumis joined Romanian club Venus București, after scoring two goals against Romania a year earlier. He played his first Divizia A match on 13 September 1946 under coach Ferenc Plattkó in a 1–1 draw against AMEF Arad. At the end of his first season, the team won the title with him contributing with 18 goals netted in the 20 games Plattkó used him. He won two more championships in the 1938–39 and 1939–40 seasons, playing under coach Béla Jánosy in 14 matches in which he scored nine goals in the first one and in eight games with five goals netted in the second. He played in the last three matches of the 1940 Cupa României final, when, after two draws in two replays of the final (in the first replay, which ended 4–4, Choumis scored two goals) Rapid București won the third replay and the trophy. He remains in history as the first scorer for a Romanian team in the European competitions, netting the first goal for Venus București in the first round of the 1937 Mitropa Cup against Ujpest from Hungary. The match was lost by Venus, 4–6, with Choumis also scoring the last goal of the Romanian team.
He stayed with Venus during World War II but left in 1946 to play for IT Arad. Choumis played only one game for ITA in half a season, before moving to Rapid București, but ITA managed to win the championship without him. In 1947, he joined Karres Mediaș, where he played a season alongside Ștefan Dobay. He made a total of 102 appearances and scored 80 goals in the Romanian top-league, Divizia A. In 1948, Choumis returned to Venus, which was playing in Divizia C, and in 1950 he joined Divizia B club Progresul ICAS București, retiring in 1951.
International career
Choumis played nine games and scored eight goals for Greece, making his debut on 23 December 1934 under coach Apostolos Nikolaidis in a 2–1 home win against Yugoslavia in the 1934–35 Balkan Cup. A few days later, in the same competition, he scored his first goal in a 2–2 draw against Romania.
In his last match for Greece, he scored the team's only goal in Cairo, but the Greek squad lost to Egypt.
In 1941, after five years of living in Romania, Choumis made his debut for Romania's national team under coach Virgil Economu in a 3–2 friendly victory against Slovakia where he scored once. His second and last international match for The Tricolours came in June 1943, playing another friendly against Slovakia which ended with a 2–2 draw.
Managerial career
Choumis started his coaching career at Progresul ICAS in 1951, where he worked for several of the club's teams in the Romanian lower leagues in the cities of Focșani, Satu Mare and Bucharest. From 1955 onwards, he had tenures at multiple clubs from the lower leagues, including Flacăra Moreni, Locomotiva Constanța, Progresul Sibiu, CSU București and Șantierul Naval Maritim Constanța. Notably, he helped the latter gain promotion to Divizia B. In 1961, he went to work as a junior coach at Farul Constanța, returning after one year to coach seniors at IMU Medgidia, and in 1963 he had a stint at Jiul Petroșani. Choumis returned to Greece in the mid-1960s, coaching clubs like Egaleo, Ethnikos and PAS Giannina. In 1969, he coached for one month the national amateur team of Greece.
Death
Choumis died on 20 July 1981 in Athens, Greece at age 67.
Romania
Bulgaria
Egypt
Slovakia