Gencler on the precipice

The first half of the season has now passed... Genclerbirligi have had three full-time coaches (and one part-time), they haven't managed to score a goal for at least four weeks and we find ourselves in the relegation zone. Things are starting to look scary.

Eskisehirspor 2 - 0 Genclerbirligi

The match kicked off at 7pm on a freezing Monday night in Eskisehir and as I had a diary clash with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra I had to listen to the first half on the radio whilst driving towards the Ankara Arena, next door to our spiritual home - the 19 Mayis.

The traffic was horrible but Gencler started fast but... in their first attack of the game Eskisehir scored. About half an hour in the anouncer said that Gencler had had something like 80 percent possession! Eighty-bloody-percent! We had shots and headers but nothing went in.

Then about the half hour mark Eskisehir went two up. Both goals seemed to have come from nowhere.

Seemingly everyone going to the concert drove and so I ended up having to park near the Ruzgarlı Gate Bridge. Half-time in the match and in the Arena I turned off my phone. I wasn't upset.

I then sat back and enjoyed one of those classical music concerts that aim to please everyone. You get all the famous bits of music from the commercials, you get the sing-along Turkish classical music bits. We even got some Andrew Lloyd Webber. It sounds horrible but was actually quite funny. A sort-of easy listening concert that you go to more for the cultural experience than for the music. Don't get me wrong, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra are brilliant... just not in a basketball hall.

Half-time in the concert, turn my phone on and check the messages... "Gencler have gone from a Jekyll and Hyde team to Hyde and Hyde," said Alex. Quite.

Genclerbirligi sign Yilmaz Vural

Genclerbirligi have a new manager. Now that's a sentence you only see five or six times a year. The new man is Yilmaz Vural... yet another of the merry-go-round coaches that clog up Turkish football. Let's have a look at his managerial career. This is from Wikipedia.

Teams managed
Years	Team
1986–1988	Malatyaspor
1988–1989	Antalyaspor
1989	Samsunspor
1989–1990	Bursaspor
1990–1991	Karşıyaka S.K.
1991	Adanaspor
1991–1993	Bursaspor
1993–1994	Gaziantepspor
1995–1996	Eskişehirspor
1996–1997	Sarıyer
1997	Trabzonspor
1997–1998	Gençlerbirliği
1998–1999	Konyaspor
1999	Dardanelspor
1999–2000	Bursaspor
2000–2001	Denizlispor
2001	Diyarbakırspor
2003–2004	Adanaspor
2004	Çaykur Rizespor
2005	Ankaragücü
2005–2007	Antalyaspor
2008	Manisaspor
2008–2009	Kocaelispor
2009–2010	Kasımpaşa S.K.
2011	Konyaspor
2012	Sakaryaspor
2012–2013	Elazığspor
2014	Mersin İdman Yurdu
2014	Osmanlıspor
2015	Karabükspor

EDIT: Five days after I posted this, 29 December 2015, Yilmaz Vural was sacked. Five days...

Ankaragücü 2 - 0 Tuzlaspor -- Merry Christmas!

And the view from the changing rooms.

Ankaragücü enter the mid-season break in second place, and everything to play for in the back stretch of the season.

A chilly day (see Chris's post yesterday for a more in-depth look at 90 minutes standing in the cold) would have been matched by the emotional coldness of standing alone on the terraces, but five minutes into the match Emir and the Pegasus boys came over and joined me.

Nothing else much happened in the first half - both sides played pretty scrappy football, with Ankaragücü looking the slightly stronger team.

The second half was very different: from the off, Ankaragücü dominated. It wasn't through some demonstration of tactical genius, sadly: Tuzlaspor just realised they were in danger and became extremely defensive - and Ankaragücü fans and players were noticeably chipper despite not ringing up any goals.

The Pegasus crew, meanwhile, had distributed themselves to the far reaches of the stadium. "This is for good luck," Emir told me. "We change seats until Ankaragücü score."

From there on in, the boys in sarı-lacivert managed to string together many consecutive attacks, which were all either offside, over the bar, deflected off a defender or beaten by a last-minute tackle. A counter-attack by Tuzla in the 72nd minute nearly soured things, with a desperate goal-mouth struggle ending in a Tuzla player skying the ball into the crowd.

A few minutes later, Ankara took advantage of a lapse in the defending to put a beautiful ball over to Emrah Bozkurt in a one-on-one with the keeper. His shot was placed at a tight angle, and there was a gasp in the stands for the millisecond before the ball bounced back, confirming it had hit the net.

From then on, Tuzlaspor tried, falteringly, to go into all-out attack, but Ankaragücü remained dominant. The referee even gave them a last chance for a Christmas miracle by refusing to stop the game, even after a lot of extra time.

The extra minutes didn't do them any good: Ankaragücü sealed their victory with a great goal in maybe minute seven of extra time which - thanks to the twin miracles of technology and Ankaragücü fanaticism - we can bring you here:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog!

When does the bloody winter break start?

Underwear... check
Socks... check
Second layer of socks... check
Long Johns... check
Trousers... check
Winter boots... check

Right, that's the bottom bit down. Now for upstairs.

Ski undershirt... check
Shirt... check
Gencler top... check
Cardigan... check
Scarf... check
Woolly hat... check
-50 degrees jacket... check
Gloves... check

And so attired Little Oz Kanka and I set off into the fog that engulfed Ankara all day on Sunday. We were damn well prepared but it was still bloody freezing at the 19 Mayis for the 7 pm kick-off. Despite all this there was a half decent-sized crowd (going by recent attendances, not pre-Passolig attendances). The Fener fans pretty much filled their away section behind the goals and us Gencler lot made a decent, if not spectacular, show of force.

Did I mention it was cold?

We met with Alex at the Soul Bar in Kizilay (excellent food and beers at good prices) and had our usual pre-match discussions.

Being a Liverpool fan, Alex was particularly interested to see if Fenerbahce were going to play former Man. United players Nani and Van Persie. As some of you may have realised having read this blog over the past 10 years, I don't actually know much about football, and so I asked Alex, with genuine, if naive, interest as to whether he liked Nani and Van Persie. Alex merely said that he may be testing this evening the non-swearing rule that the Genclerbirligi fans self impose.

Genclerbirligi 0 - 1 Fenerbahce

It was only a couple of minutes into the match when I understood what Alex was on about. In just those few minutes, Nani had managed to piss off the entire Gencler crowd.

Nani went down on what probably was a foul but quite possibly wasn't. Either way it was nothing much. Nani though was writhing around on the pitch right in front of the Gencler fans in a way that only the most one-eyed Fener fan could interpret as being "I'm hurt". He wasn't hurt of course because as soon as one of the Gencler players said as much he bounced back onto the balls of his feet and looked like a prize fighter. That was that. The crowd was going to give him shit for the rest of the night. He asked for it too, play acting a few more times... arguing away with the referee, pushing Gencler players around. He also played some very nice football... but he is basically a dick.

The match itself was a bit niggly, with the Fener players seemingly put off. The referee was giving everything to Fener at the start and I have to say that for a team coming second last in the league and having sacked our coach last week, we weren't doing too badly against one of the best sides in the league.

Oh, by the way, I think we have signed Mustafa Kaplan as our new coach (note: this news may be out of date by the time I manage to publish this post).

The Fener fans were impressive with their singing and we were having great fun in winding Nani up when... bang... someone got through our defence and put a cross was in. Header and goal.

One-nil up and it looked very, very unlikely that we might pull it back.

I think we played bravely, it was a damn sight better than the absolute rubbish we put on against Sivas last week, but if it wasn't for some great saves from Hopf we would have lost this by much more.

As the match wound down a large section decided to ignore Nani for a bit and instead called on Cavcav to resign.

Match over and ... the players shuffled off, as did we, not really disappointed but a bit depressed. The Fener fans were still singing away as we walked out. I had to laugh though. The Fener fans had sung their hearts out for the entire match. They were fantastic. And the Fenerbahce players were so grateful that after the match they walked straight into the tunnel without even acknowledging their supporters. I hope there are some traumatised kiddies because of that.

But back to us.

We are in one hell of a bad situation at the moment. If we don't get a result against Eskisehirspor next week things will not be good.

It was bloody cold tonight... and Nani is a bit of a dick.

         

A STAR FOR THE FUTURE

Greetings Kankas and Kankies

Meet Omer Akkerman who plays for the Ankaragucu Under 15s Team.   He also turns out as a Ball Boy in the senior matches.

His mother, Nese Akkerman, is a good friend of mine and she has been reliably informed by people ‘in the know’ that Omer has all the qualities necessary to make it into the senior team when he is old enough.

We wish him continued success at the Club and will be following his progress over the next few years.

Afterthought ....... mmmmm ......... perhaps I should inform Alan Stubbs, Manager of Hibernian FC, to keep an eye on him before Real Madrid or Bayern Munich become interested ??!!!

All the best from Eski Kanka Jim

The end of Passolig?

It seems as if the football fans group Taraf-der have had a big victory in the courts with the Passolig system, in particular the fact that a bank runs it, deemed unconstitutional. As with anything to do with trade law, constitutionality and implementation ... it isn't clear what exactly happens next.

This is from a pretty good translation into English (except for a bit at the end where I think the copy/paste function buggered up) of an article originally posted in Turkish on the Football Supporters Europe website:

... in November 2015, the Constitutional Court of Turkey finally discussed the case. However did not release the official desicion. But finally the official declaration have been released on 16th of December by the Constitutional Court.

According to this desicion from now on, TFF or the football clubs can not assign their rights to sell and marketing tickets to the third parties and can not share the personal ID informations of the fans with the third parties also. This means as like before the Passolig times, TFF and the football clubs should be the only responsible parties to sell the tickets. This developement had been interperented as the end of the Passolig application, which is a trade mark of the Aktifbank, by the fan lawyers.

You can check out the whole article here.

What next? I don't know. But from the tweets and messages I'm seeing... Passolig may very soon come to pass.

Ankaragucu vs Tuzlaspor match preview!

So the TFF strike again and have changed the date and time of an Ankaragucu home match, this time to Monday night at 7pm against Tuzlaspor. One of the things i hate about football is how little thought their is for the people who are the heart and sole of the game, the fans! We live in a world run by corporate organisations and its very evident they are at the top of football and decisions are made with not a single thought of how it will effect the fans.

So as usual, people who are working late on a Monday will miss out on another Ankaragucu match. The game against Tuzlaspor is another huge match for the club as they look to put pressure on leaders Manisaspor who travel to Sivas BB at the weekend and can go 9 points clear with Ankaragucu still to play their match on Monday.

Tuzlaspor put up a spirited performance yesterday as they lost 2-1 at home against Fenerbahce in the Turkish Cup. Although Fenerbahce rested all their first team players, they still had some quality players and Tuzla put in a good account of themselves. They currently sit 8th place in the league and have won their last 3 home games as they chase a playoff spot.

Kemal Kilic will be hoping for a repeat of the performance that saw Ankaragucu beat Kocaeli Birlikspor 2-0 a couple of weeks ago at home. Hasan Ayaroglu will be hoping he done enough in the last game to merit a place in the starting line up after being left on the bench. The team needs creative players like Hasan, Omer and Emrah to be at their best as well as staying solid at the back.

Lets hope on Monday night we are all celebrating an Ankaragucu win and a 3 point gap between us and leaders Manisaspor, knowing our luck we will lose and be 9 points behind though.