The Frustation Of A Turkish Football Fan

‘’Come on Turkey!’’ and ‘’Go Turkey!’’ are in most turkish people’s mind just before a game of the turkish natonal team. You want your national team to win at all cost and are pretty sure that that will happen. Then the game starts and suddenly, after 80 minutes it’s 3-0 for the opponent and you want the game to  end as quickly as possible to avoid further humiliation. A day of a turkish football fan.

Before the Iceland game, Turkey recently beat Denmark in an away game. Players were optimistic, Terim was also optimistic. So optimistic that he completely screwed up his line-up against what was apparently going to be an easy opponent. Terim chose to play with a 3-4-3 line-up, including the likes of Emre (33), Gökhan Gönül (28), Selçuk and Burak Yilmaz and more weak performing, or aging players, rather than giving the youth the chance.

In a country of 77 million people, you would expect more than the ones that played against Iceland. The current squad is filled with undisciplined, unmotivated average players who do not deserve to be called up, not now not ever. Take Selçuk Inan for instance. A player who has been off-form for 2 seasons now, is performing pretty weak for his club and for his country as well, does literally nothing on the pitch other than slowering down the game. How he gets preferred over AS Roma’s Salih Uçan, or Fenerbahçe’s Alper Potuk remains to be a question, although those 2 aren’t exactly great either.

                                                                 AS Roma's Salih Uçan (20)

Then you got a defensive midfielder like Topal, who has been transformed to a defender by our wondergenius Fatih Terim. Lacking pace and playmaking ability, wouldn’t it be much better to convince the likes of Emre Can, Liverpool player, to play for the Turkish national team, rather than give this old rock a  chance? Wouldn’t it be better to go to a Europe tour and convince all these good players (and we got them), and actually play them instead to play the unmotivated Super League-players?

Without even thinking more than 5 seconds, I can name the following talents who are potentially good enough to play for the turkish national team: Semih Kaya (22), Sinan Kurt (18) , Salih Uçan (20), Tarik Çamdal (24) , Hakan Çalhanoglu (20), Mustafa Pektemek (26) , Ismail Köybasi (25), Alper Potuk (23), Kaan Ayhan (20) , Emre Can (20).

 

Liverpool's Emre Can, (20)

Although Pektemek may not be classified as a talent anymore, it is important to not that some of these players haven’t chosen the turkish national team yet, and to prevent making awful mistakes (Inler, Özil, Gündogan, Derdiyok et. Etc.), one of the many things that the TFF needs to do is to convince these players to play for their real country, which will be not an easy task considering how ridiculously bad things are looking at the moment.

And the problem is not only players not being good enough. No, the problem is much bigger than that. Not going in too much details, but in a country where someone makes a football club nearly bankrupt, becomes football federation president, and where it is obvious that a certain team has been caught for match fixing, doesn’t get punished, even becomes champion, it is very, very difficult to grow as a football country.

TFF President and crook, Yildirim Demirören 

The classic mentality of turkish footballers, to go to to a turkish top club, play well a few months then consider yourself equal to Ronaldo and Messi, is also another reason why turkish football hasn’t had decent progress. It says enough that they needed a coach who is mostly known for his pep-talks and motivating players to beat the likes of Romania, last qualification campaign.

Terim hasn’t been great either in his last few seasons. After shocking defeats to Real Madrid and a terrible season start, he got a beef with Galatasaray’s club president, and left the club to go to the turkish national football team. Not being the greatest tactician, Terim’s biggest strength is how he motivates players to play very well. But considering football modernized and you gotta do more than just your best, it is not much useful anymore. Having followed Terim’s teams for ages, the strategy he knows best is the 4-4-2 with 2 pressing attackers, one that made Galatasaray turkish champion in 2012. Other than that, he lacks the football knowledge to try out something else that will actually work.  

Another thing is the foreign limitation rule, a rule that doesn’t allow turkish football clubs to field more than 5 foreign players at the same time on the pitch in a game. And look how effective that turned out to be!

Maybe times will change, maybe we will see an incredible comeback like we’ve experienced 6 years ago but for now, change is inevitable.