Saturday, November 25, 2017

The march towards relegation continues

Sir Eski: "There are more stewards than Osmanli fans"

Osmanlispor 2 - 0 Genclerbirligi

Spine, Sir Eski and myself made it down to the Red Lion to watch another woeful display from Gencler. I'm not even going to bother with an analysis of the match except to say that it was only fitting that one of the players we sold off at the beginning of the season, Serdar Guler, looked like he could have defeated us all on his own. He scored both goals.

All up around 12 Osmanli fans showed up. I ended up winning a beer off a bloke at the bar who insisted that there must have been a match ban on spectators.

Nope... the real reason is now that Melih Gokcek has resigned as mayor of Ankara there is no one to offer free chicken kebabs and 50 tl to municipal workers to show up.

And so the matched kicked off with zero atmosphere... except...

After Mesut Bakkal was sacked/resigned last week the club mysteriously signed Umit Ozat, the very same coach who we got rid of just a couple of months ago for having been a complete failure. After being sacked Ozat posted a picture on social media of him shaking friends with his "old friend" Sedat Peker, a convicted organised crime boss with some fairly extreme right-wing views, i.e. exactly the kind of person Genclerbirligi fans do not like very much.

So, the 50 or so Gencler fans who went off to the Osmanli stadium in the middle of nowhere on a cold Friday night ended up tying their banners upside down in protest. Within seconds of kick off they where shouting for Ozat to resign.

In a press conference afterwards Umit Ozat said it was wrong for the fans to swear at him and to be calling for his resignation just 5 minutes after taking over at the club. We had the sound off at the Red Lion so I can't confirm if the fans were swearing but there is certainly no doubt they were calling on him to resign. Ozat then bizarrely said that those at the match calling for the management to resign included Ankaragucu fans wearing Gencler shirts.

Ankaragucu on Saturday put out a statement condemning what they described as Ozat's "ugly behaivour" and then went on to give Ozat some information concerning the relationship between the two clubs ie... that they are actually friends.

The fact the Ozat had complained about fans swearing at him made news that came out on Saturday even funnier.

Klasspor reported that long-time fan, former junior player and current member of Genclerbirligi, Mehmet Soylu, had made an official complaint and a judicial investigation has been launched into Ozat swearing at him on social media a couple of months ago.

"You bastard. You come to the training facilities and you write here like a useless, stupid person," Ozat told Soylu via Instagram. (By the way, the "useless, stupid person" bit of the quote may not be exact... the Turkish word was sunepe... quite difficult to get the meaning across in a simple translation) 

It was just general sort of swearing but as we know words like "bastard" are a lot more forceful in Turkish than in English. Ozat has been asked to "help police in their investigations"* and has since deleted his Instagram account where the conversation took place.

What next for Genclerbirligi? Who knows. One thing that is certain is the club's management will be hoping that the new stadium to replace the 19 Mayis gets underway as scheduled during the winter break. That way Genclerbirligi will be forced to play the second half of the stadium a million miles away. With no fans at matches the calls for "Yonetim Istifa" will be silenced... at least in the stands.
* perhaps not the exact Turkish judicial procedure.

2 comments:

  1. Unfortunately I can’t see there being any way out of this for Gencler and the appointment of Umut Ozat has all but sealed your fate. Such a shame and will be sad to see Gencler go down

    Hopefully Osmanlispor go down and never come back, fake manufactured club who showed their true colours with 0 fans now Gokcek is gone

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  2. Sad days for our brother Gencler fans.

    I hate to say it, but Osmanli...spit...spor were a level or two above Gencler on Friday night and could even have won by a larger margin with more clinical finishing.

    All I can do is point to Kayseri's escape act last season when they won their last 3 or 4 matches to avoid relegation by a whisker ..... and ........ look at them now !!!!

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