February 10 – The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) decision to break coronavirus stadium lock-out rules and allow privileged access to 150 healthcare workers in for the Fenerbahce vs Galatasaray derby backfired at the weekend.
The healthcare workers – who had all received coivd vaccinations prior to the game – were all Fenerbahce fans. Rather than take the opportunity to enjoy the game, they instead started to abuse Galatasaray players and coaches, even getting into an argument with Galatasaray’s assistant manager.
Fenerbahce ended up losing the match 1-0 and are now on equal points with Galatasaray at the top the SuperLig table but behind them and Besiktas on goal difference.
The scenes amongst the fans at the match were so unpleasant that TFF chairman Nihat Özdemir issued a statement afterwards saying that the trial of letting healthcare workers into stadia as a gesture of thanks would not be repeated.
“This application was made special for derby by trial purposes, but we will not repeat it again due to adverse events during the match. People come to the stadium and they curse. Isn’t it a shame? From now on, there will only be people from the club and state protocol,” said Özdemir.
The Fenerbahce-Galatasary rivalry is one of the fiercest in football. Fenerbahce fans most recently, and encouraged by their club president Ali Koc, have complained that Galatasaray have too great an influence over the Turkish game and in particular referees.
A focus of Koc’s complaints has been the SuperLig’s domestic broadcaster beIN Sports who the fans and Koc maintained have influenced decisions through the biased commentary of ex-Galatasaray professionals are working at beIN.
Koc even went to the extreme of displaying banners and printing t-shirts in the style of the beIN logo with the text beFAIR.
Not surprisingly that angered the broadcaster who pays $370 million a season for broadcast rights. The Turkish league rights are about to go out for tender for the next rights cycle and beIN has become considerably more circumspect over where it chooses to spend its rights fees in a changing broadcast market.
Koc has financial issues of his own with Fenerbahce having racked up $700 million of debt and still failed to win the SuperLig for seven seasons. He even asked fans to chip in to pay for new transfer signing Mesut Ozil. So petty has the situation become that beIN were excluded from the press conference covering the signing.
The behaviour of the healthcare professionals at the derby game will be unlikely to have helped any of those issues or the well-being of the Turkish game.
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