Why I am critical of the Turkish national team and why everyone should be
by Arda Alan Işık
ISTANBULSep 10, 2016 - 12:00 am GMT+3
by Arda Alan Işık
Sep 10, 2016 12:00 am
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." said Leo Tolstoy, "You must be the change you want to see in the world," said Mahatma Gandhi, "The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking," said Albert Einstein and "I have a dream," said Martin Luther King. The common point of all these great minds is that they put action at the center of the notion of change, therefore if we want to change the way we play, administrate and watch football, we have to take action. As a columnist, what I do for change is to expose and analyze every right and wrong action that I observe, as I will do in this piece.
First, let's talk numbers to evaluate the situation of Turkish football clearly. The Turkish Super League is the sixth biggest football league in Europe with a 776.65 million-pound total market value and ranked 10th in the UEFA coefficient. The big guns of Turkish football, Fenerbahçe (133 million pounds), Beşiktaş (99 million pounds) and Galatasaray (90 million pounds) are valued at 322 million pounds in total, which is clearly sufficient to become permanent competitors in the Champions League and Europa League. Nevertheless, Turkish teams have never been permanent competitors in the European arena and there has not been any noticeable success for Turkey except Galatasaray's UEFA Cup victory 16 years ago.Furthermore, while the top five biggest leagues in Europe have average attendances above 40,000, Turkey has 8,000, although the average stadium capacity in Turkey is 22,000. According to a survey done by ANDY-AR this May, 97.5 percent of the Turkish people support a team, but it seems like the lack of belief in the administrators and the low quality football overshadows the dedication of the fans.
Now, all this means that there is something wrong with the historical practice of Turkish football and it needs a fresh vision. Unfortunately, the awkward economic system of football in Turkey has been controlled by those administrators and coaches who benefit from its low quality, given they assure their positions by not developing themselves but preventing others from developing Turkish football. As long as there is no strict financial restrictions and regulations implemented, these people are almost untouchable.
However, the question is, how to start a fire that will establish a new order in Turkish football? The most legitimate and powerful way to do it is changing the way the national team approaches football, as they are the manifestation of the Turkish football philosophy. Today, unfortunately we have a national team where players, including Barcelona star Arda Turan, are dropped with reason and even accused of treason. Added to that, Turkey is managed by a coach who does not criticize his own performance and offers no sophisticated, settled or consistent strategy for his team. Seeing as the mainstream media, except some brave people like Uğur Meleke, Hıncal Uluç and Bağış Erten, normalize and justify the national team's insufficient performances, the truth about the national team has to be exposed.
Just consider Turkey's performance against Croatia, where the team barely scraped a point this Monday, which was declared a great result by the Turkish media. Even though Croatia played only one more game than Turkey in Euro 2016 as Fatih Terim always says, coach Ante Cacic did not drop half of his team to create scapegoats. Croatia maintained their squad. Numbers always tell the truth, Croatia had 58 percent of the ball and had 17 shots while Turkey only had six, I am not even talking about the four direct chances the Croatians created that were rejected by the crossbars. As I wrote in my piece ahead of the Croatia game, Turkey needed some extraordinary luck to survive this game.
At this point, it hurts me to watch the Turkish national team, to agonize in pain while there is so much potential. What hurts me more is that the Turkish football community considers these results as satisfactory and they justify their position by claiming to be realistic. Nevertheless, the national team should be the place where Turkey must create and develop philosophies that can shape national football. If we do not settle on a football philosophy that will combine our cultural codes and the demands of modern football, we are going to waste more tournaments and generations. That is why I will criticize the national team until they promise a reliable future, and if you care about Turkish football, you should too.
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