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Bittersweet Symphony

Including the Bursa fixture, we have won three matches straight and we may even further this positive stretch next Monday against Kayseri, who have beaten us deservedly back in the first half of the season. We will be missing Veli and Almeida due to suspensions, however Köybaşı will be back on the leftback even though Tanju have shown confidence in his absence. We may also see Q7 with a half an hour comeback in the upcoming fixture as well as 10-15 minute Ersan Gülüm after a year of injury absence.

The title of this post points out the fact that some critical referee decisions were made in favor of Besiktas for the last three games and these decisions directly involved and affected the outcome of these 9 points earned. First Rüştü's blunder, and then Cenk pulled out the ball from almost a meter inside the goal and yesterday's last second goal was clearly offside. I do truly want to see these as pure referee mistakes without any intention, thus it makes me think about the recent mistakes or decisions that were against us. For instance, Almeida's recent goal against Galatasaray was disallowed due to a foul awarded by our so called "elite" referee Cüneyt Çakır. Last year Almeida's shot came out of the goal after bouncing as much as a meter inside the goal area in Karabük match at home. If I can think further, Nobre's goal were ruled out due to a handball in an Ankara away game couple of year's back. The same referee who ruled out Nobre's goal missed the offside position yesterday. Hence, he may have inadvertently paid back his dues after two-three years of time. In the end, we can only say the common phrase of "What goes around, comes around" for these mishaps.

If we would force ourselves to talk about the tactics and Carvalhal's interference during the game, we can only say that he had gambled and got paid off at the last second for the first time since the beginning of the season. He is a kind of a guy that doesn't like change in a squad for a long time unless there is a necessity due to injuries and/or suspensions. Indeed, we are going through some injuries and suspensions as well, especially in the defensive area and it seems that Carvalhal didn't create a secondary bunch that would at least mimic the original. For example, there is not another player that can fulfill Fernandes' position and shoes in the team. Tanju was available all season but we did not see anything about him before. Burak Kaplan, Atınç, Mehmet Akyüz are all used in minimal minutes and truly we don't know if they can cope up with any difficult situation in the future. I guess it is too much to ask from him in this chaotic status quo of the Turkish football these days anyways. However, we could have seen more youngsters at least to prepare them for the next season.

On the other hand, I totally agree with our ever loveable, warmblooded, sypathetic coach about the upcoming fixtures. A terrible Monday, Thursday, Sunday fixture is awaiting us before the very important UEFA match up against Braga. I guess the planners are very busy negotiating the terms of their bank account transfers for their actions to keep those in the league and they basically overlooked this little detail for Turkish Football's sake.

What I have liked about the last couple of games is the fighting spirit of team had made a comeback in a grand scale that should further push us towards our goals for this season. If we can keep this heat a little longer, why not?

Eagles vs. Crocs, a Déja vu

Not to be misplaced by the late "hot-in" shoemaker brand Crocs, Bursa's Crocodiles were eaten alive at a dinner on the Bosphorus by the Beşiktaş' Eagles.

When the line up was available for us the spectators, my only objection was for the goalkeeping area, in which I believe Cenk should have been placed no questions asked. Not that I totally trust him %100, but let's just say I do trust him more than Rüştü. So does our defense as İsmail's mistakes were clearly visible when Rüştü is in action. Seriously, this boy morphs into a different player with Rüştü and something else when Cenk plays. There must be reason, isn't it? We knew that our weakest link would be a right back Ekrem Dağ with his poor defending abilities, and Ozan İpek dug that mine all night long. His crosses have made a lot of aerial threats as everyone knows how weak Rüştü was against these crosses as well.

However, the livelihood of our midfield youngsters such as Necip and Veli and front runners Edu and Almeida was the key factor for the positive scoreline on our perspective in the first half. It is true that Bursa have lacked finishing on various occasions -from 6 yards out twice, but Beşiktaş have also missed quite a few quality chances in the first half an hour as well. After that it seemed like someone have stepped into the brakes and Bursaspor, of course, did not say "No" to this invitation and scored from a simple mistake of Fernandes, who was having one of the troubled performances as a personal record.

Second half developed as it was expected. A gushing Bursa and defending Beşiktaş prolonged for a long time until the substitutions were made. After that, spaces on the field became wide open and on one occasion Pektemek have sung the fat lady's song, once again. Ekrem's last minute miss was another goofy spectacle for his career as well. I truly admire his positioning when he plays up front and truly despise it when he plays in the back. I hope Carvalhal can solve this issue at hand. Another note for Carlos was that he didn't opt for Holosko for fast break counter attacks from 65th to 70th minutes on and he may even introduced Pektemek a little earlier to tie it up the whole thing as well.



Ernst's early caution was also another defect throughout the whole game. Necip's injury came on top of it in the second half and things got a little bit messier afterwards. Hopefully it won't be as serious as it looked, otherwise it will be a serious blow after Sivok and Egemen's absences for the next match up against Antalya on Friday night.

Having shown a real poor performance on away games this season and it is clear that we will be missing tons of players like Egemen, Sivok, Q7, Hilbert and maybe Necip, I can say that it will be a miracle to get the 3 points from Antalya on next game. But miracles do happen, don't they?



In my opinion Cenk should start next weekend and also Tanju should get a chance on rightback pushing Ekrem up front, however we know that this will not happen. With Egemen and Sivok missing probably we will see the formation of Toraman and Sidnei in the center and this surely will make Schifo Mehmet very happy. İsmail will of course be on the left as he has no other alternative thanks to Toraman's duel with Üzülmez last year in an Ankara away game. Another question will be the formation on the midfield. Will Necip be back? Will Fernandes be back on his form again? Will Veli be strong enough for another round? Will Ernst be ready for a tough match up? All of these questions will definitely be answered and until then we should just sit back and pray for the best.

It is clear that this team will finish in top four in one way or another though. After the play-off mess we will see ahead of ourselves much better. Right now it seems like we're driving on a foggy day with lots of rain on top of that.

Of course we had to point out the mistake that our legendary keeper did last night as well. Sorry crocs, we owe you one...

Fevzi Tuncay Replica

Strictly home made, 1999-2000 season goalkeeper replica shirt has just been added to the collection. The base Uhlsport shirt was purchased from ebay and the club and sponsor logo was recreated as an exact match from Fevzi Tucay's kit. It will be one of the nicest items of the collection, especially when you think of goalkeeper shirts alone. If you'd like to see the whole collection, you may click here.

I am always open to offers for the shirts that I don't have in my collection. Thanks and hope to see many more additions in the future.

October 5th, 1988

On October 1988 Beşiktaş played a 1st round 2nd leg away game against Dinamo Zagreb. the match took place in the Maximir Stadium which was in today's Croatia, but that time it was still Yugoslavia's Zagreb.

Later years, European Football would have heard a lot about Boban and Mihajlovic, especially in Milano, Italy and in Munich, Germany. However, a year before Boban had already won a world youth championship cup with his U-20 Yugoslavian side and started to make small ripples back then already.

Having won the first leg 1-0 at home, Beşiktaş simply starts out with a strict defense knowing that a single goal that they will score should earn them a second round spot in the European Arena. Dinamo needs the goal desperately and looks more of the pressing side, however could not find an opening to dissolve Beşiktaş' defense.

There comes the infamous referee trio of the game, starts to push Dinamo a little more forward with the critical foul and offside decisions, which seems to be given deliberately in advance of the home team. For example, in the first quarter of the match, an offside decision was given against Beşiktaş, and if this would happen today, UEFA probably rip apart the refereeing licenses of the trio from that night. Here's some not so clear pictures from that but still gives you the idea:






You can see clearly that when the ball was played out to Zeki, he was about 5 to 7 meters behind the last defender.

Eventually, after all the artificial pressure that was created by the referees, a good passing move gives the lead to Dinamo Zagreb and the first half ends with that scoreline. On the second half, the mentality of Beşiktaş doesn't change much, but seems to be more eager for counter attack options, especially with Feyyaz up front. Here comes the second critical decision of that night when Feyyaz was clearly going for a real good goal scoring chance and brought down by his defending opponent while he was almost entering into the Zagreb's penalty area. The referee says; play on folks... In today's standards it could even be a straight red card:





Actually I am amazed that they didn't try the offside trick on this one as well.

The third and final knock comes in when the ball was played about 60 yards or so up in the sky by Boban, -could be more 'cause it really went out of the view of the camera-, and Beşiktaş leftback Kadir tries to head this awkward ball away with a very unlucky and most likely unintentionally touch of his hand changes the direction of the ball in the penalty area. The foxy referee sees the opportunity from about 50 meters away and decides for a penalty. Mihajovic doubles the lead as Beşiktaş' keeper Zalad, a former Yugoslavian today's Serbian National goes to the other end of the goal line.






In the end, operation against Beşiktaş was complete and the referee even finishes the game before the full 90 minutes over, just in case a stray shot from Beşiktaş may goes in to the Zagreb net and would spoil everything. About 5 minutes or so of protests comes from the Beşiktaş squad as a whole including the subs and all, while Zagreb players goes for a victory lap in the Maximir Stadium.



If you have half an hour to spare, you can click on this link here to see the review from youtube, with the original commentary by the Croatians from that infamous night in Zagreb.

And who was that referee from that night? One Todor Kolev from Bulgaria... I kept searching about him, but I guess apart from only three qualifier matches in late 80s and early 90s, he seemed to be retired from the refereeing arena. I wonder why?

A portrait of a ...

You are free to fill in the blanks...

Echoes of the Oldcity

Well, it's not really the old city, it's just how the name of Eskisehir rolls in when you literally translate it into English.

After a very lengthy! winterbreak, -which was about 11 days or so, we had the first game of the second half of the season and conquered the stands as well as the pundits with the effort that we have shown on the field. From head to toe, everyone was doing their job especially helping each other closing those gaps when pressing the opponent.

Even though Almeida was a little off again, I do like his composure and his will to get into the action in which there were numerous chances for him to score again. Having very used to Q7's assists Almeida was still looking for a supplier like him all night long, at least until he was pulled out on 75th minute. Pektemek, then, did fulfilled his job description and scored to pull the plug of Eskisehirspor on the 90th minute. Even though it should have been pulled much earlier, the lack of finishing quality in the team prevented that.

Usually fans talk about the strikers first and the goals that were scored or missed. This post has started like that too but we must talk about our defense line as well. Having only the 7th clean sheet of the season, our men in the back four have never been seen so solid and strong since the days of, Recep, Ulvi, Gökhan and Kadir. Even in the 100th year, when Ronaldo and Zago was the defensive backbone, the defense wasn't this much efficient and played a crucial role even in positively changing the score. Defenders in a team primarily defends and then scores. If they do score occasionally, this means that they do their defensive duties well and having completed their duties, they do extra work by scoring goals. Sivok scores, Egemen scores, Hilbert scores or take shots that the rebounds cause threats and Ismail always have the attacking mind, -maybe a little to much-, and all of this shows how solid defensive back line build up that we have.

Don't get me wrong though, a real good defense always starts from upfront. Since the introduction of Veli, Ernst and Necip the stamina of the midfield gradually went up from zilch to %70-80 in all of the football terms. The numbers of stealing the ball, positive tackling, harrassing the opponent upfront so that they can't use the ball correctly went up dramatically. Also the introduction of Fernandes after Guti's departure created and added value in which the lack of creativity finessed in his feet.

Nothing's still perfect though, not even close if you ask me. First of all, the biggest problem in the squad is the alternating the similar quality of footballers in case of the injuries and/or during suspensions. We were happy that Simao made a comeback last night, however most of us probably collapsed when we saw Hilbert on the ground and heard the MR results today that he will be expected to miss about 8 games. Another shocking news came in when Aurelio will go under a surgical operation, which means he will be out rest of the season. Q7 will be out for another 4-5 games in this month as well. The squad have proved that they can do without Q7 or Simao or Aurelio but Hilbert's injury will be very critical for the outcome of the season. I am still hopefull and will be praying for his quick rehab in order for him to come back as early as 2 weeks time. Until then we will have to hope and pray for Ekrem and/or Tanju to fulfill his position.

Maybe the first few games ahead of us like Ankaragücü and Gaziantep Belediye will be easy enough for them to cope with the task but the later fixtures will push the limits for sure. Moreover, I really do not want to hear about any other injury news till the end of the season.

In the end, it was a happy ending in terms of the 3 points and confidence build-up of the squad, but everyone should know that the tough term has not started yet. Also, lack of concentration cost Mersin idman Yurdu a lot last week against Ankaragücü fielded with tons of reserve players due to their financial condition. Let us hope that we will never face a similar situation like that on Sunday. I was waiting since 1993 for the news of Ankaragücü's relegation. Hopefully this will be that year, and we will be one of the teams that nailed couple of nails on their coffin. I would be extremely happy if the score would be 8-0 as well...