The national team and foreign players in the Super League
In their crucial three-game stretch, Turkey successfully tallied six points in their first two games against Kosovo and Finland, bringing relief to the team after their horrible start to World Cup qualifiers.
Fatih Terim's insistence on his classic counter-attacking strategies cost the team seven points in the first three games of the group stage, but eventually paid off to bring six points in their last two games.
Nevertheless, given the weak displays by Finland and Kosovo, Terim's tactics have not been proven to be truly effective just yet, and the real value of his system will be seen against Croatia, Iceland and Ukraine.
But strangely, today's hot discussion is not Terim's tactics, but rather about bringing the ancient foreign players limit back into Turkish football, unfortunately.
After the national team's victory against Finland last week, Turkish Football Federation Yıldırım Demirören, who was the chairman that abolished the foreign players limit two years ago, stated that, "We might revise the foreign players limit after discussing it with the clubs, I believe we have to increase the number of native players and decrease the foreigners."
It was a complete shock for almost everyone in the Turkish football, because the consensus was and is that limiting the number of foreigners in the league does not correlate with the improvement of native players, let alone being the cause.
I intentionally wrote "improvement," because I assume when Demirören said, "We should increase the number of natives," he meant high quality native players who can cover for the high quality foreign players.
Otherwise, as it was before the abolishment of the foreign players limit, low quality native players enjoyed the closed economic system by getting unrealistic contracts with less work. Given there are not enough high quality foreign players to threaten their position, they do not seek to improve themselves.
On the other hand, even though the foreign players limit was changed two years ago, no significant improvement was seen in the national team. Just two years ago, the main player source of the Turkish national team was either players who were born and raised in other countries, especially Germany, or players who are currently playing in other European leagues.
Therefore, it is crystal clear that Turkish football education collapsed a long time ago and has not revived itself with the new educational philosophies.
If we want to see more successful, young Turkish players in the national team and in the big guns of the Turkish Super League, we have to make sure that our players get the best education and play in a competitive league that is not filled with elderly and fat native and foreign players.
The way to do it is not restraining clubs, but rewarding them when they opt for young native players.
However, as long as football has its place in the neoliberal economic system, this dichotomy between raising young players and achieving success will be there. Only the ones who can see that football is a simple collective action among 11 people can overcome this contradiction by trusting their own players and not becoming import-bound.
Fatih Terim's insistence on his classic counter-attacking strategies cost the team seven points in the first three games of the group stage, but eventually paid off to bring six points in their last two games.
Nevertheless, given the weak displays by Finland and Kosovo, Terim's tactics have not been proven to be truly effective just yet, and the real value of his system will be seen against Croatia, Iceland and Ukraine.
But strangely, today's hot discussion is not Terim's tactics, but rather about bringing the ancient foreign players limit back into Turkish football, unfortunately.
After the national team's victory against Finland last week, Turkish Football Federation Yıldırım Demirören, who was the chairman that abolished the foreign players limit two years ago, stated that, "We might revise the foreign players limit after discussing it with the clubs, I believe we have to increase the number of native players and decrease the foreigners."
It was a complete shock for almost everyone in the Turkish football, because the consensus was and is that limiting the number of foreigners in the league does not correlate with the improvement of native players, let alone being the cause.
I intentionally wrote "improvement," because I assume when Demirören said, "We should increase the number of natives," he meant high quality native players who can cover for the high quality foreign players.
Otherwise, as it was before the abolishment of the foreign players limit, low quality native players enjoyed the closed economic system by getting unrealistic contracts with less work. Given there are not enough high quality foreign players to threaten their position, they do not seek to improve themselves.
On the other hand, even though the foreign players limit was changed two years ago, no significant improvement was seen in the national team. Just two years ago, the main player source of the Turkish national team was either players who were born and raised in other countries, especially Germany, or players who are currently playing in other European leagues.
Therefore, it is crystal clear that Turkish football education collapsed a long time ago and has not revived itself with the new educational philosophies.
If we want to see more successful, young Turkish players in the national team and in the big guns of the Turkish Super League, we have to make sure that our players get the best education and play in a competitive league that is not filled with elderly and fat native and foreign players.
The way to do it is not restraining clubs, but rewarding them when they opt for young native players.
However, as long as football has its place in the neoliberal economic system, this dichotomy between raising young players and achieving success will be there. Only the ones who can see that football is a simple collective action among 11 people can overcome this contradiction by trusting their own players and not becoming import-bound.