His first contact with football was during the interim Olympic Games that were held in 1906 in Athens. Since then, football became an obsession for the young Athenian.

On February 1908 –with the support of several of his friends and athletes- he founds the Football Club of Athens. The ancestor of Panathinaikos FC…

Kalafatis was a great athlete and a great footballer, he was member of the national team at the Inter-Allied Games in Paris in 1919 and at the Olympic Games in Antwerp in 1920.

His football career ended in 1923. Later on he served as a coach for the national team, and for many years he had an advisory role in the administration of Panathinaikos Football Club.