© Breaking The Lines 2017-2021. All Rights Reserved.

The Strangest Managerial Arrival in the Turkish Süper Lig

July 22, 2024
Investigation Piece, Turkish Football

Gazing into a wall of yellow and blue jerseys, Jose Mourinho and the simultaneously smug yet surprised expressions of Ali Koç, the club’s divisive and volatile President cannot help but look emblematic of the problems of the disparity in wealth and resources that plague Turkish football today. 

 

Years of misspent funds, ‘paper-over-the-cracks’ types of managerial appointments and player acquisitions can only go on for so long before the inevitable cycle of underperformance and over compensated efforts to return to the glory days repeats over and over again. 

 

Earlier this year, Süper Lig clubs Konyaspor, Kayserispor, Adana Demirspor, Antalyaspor and Ankaragücü were all hit with varying degrees of transfer bans by FIFA. These bans came into effect after a season where Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe – who finished with 102 and 99 points respectively – placed over 30 points above their biggest challengers, Abdullah Avci’s Trabzonspor. 

 

 

This gulf in points is heavily indicative in the chasms in spending limits and wage bills. Galatasaray have a spending limit of over 1.4 billion lira, compared to most of the Anatolian sides who have faced bans, their limits prior to their bans were ranging from 150m-300m lira. 

 

Now clearly the solution to this is not just to allow anyone to spend whatever they like, but there has to be a fairer way of distributing wealth in the league otherwise you get this extremely top-heavy structure where the big three Istanbul clubs don’t just get the title every year, they can also have a louder voices when the league makes democratic decisions. The Turkish government has historically prioritised bailing the big three out of financial difficulty over the smaller clubs. 

 

Mourinho’s arrival in Turkey coincides with the lowest point he has faced in his managerial career. Unable to compete for the biggest jobs in Europe, his options are to coach a club in the lower reaches of a top five league or to coach a top club outside Europe’s elite. 

 

His struggles as a coach in recent years are symptomatic of a paradigm shift in the sport. The intricacies of positional football and the intensity of a more counter pressing system are qualities that have been glaringly absent from Mourinho’s teams for so long. Even the fans of Jose tend to be people who admire a certain quality of the time period which he was successful, this nostalgia fuelled the excitement when the giant institution of Fenerbahçe met the equally enormous spectre and personality of Jose Mourinho. 

 

 

Regardless, one could make the case that this isn’t even the most symbolic and revealing managerial appointment in Turkish football this summer.

 

Last season saw a spike in the collective cognisance of the divisions between Kurds and Turks which permeate both the Turkish football and socio-political landscape huge riots broke out in a cup match between Bursaspor and Amedspor. 

 

These riots came as no surprise to anyone familiar with Amedspor’s predicament. They are a club that sees themselves as separate from Turkish identity and align themselves with a unique Kurdish identity. Their fans have been punished for not partaking in the national anthem, raising the Kurdish flag at games and riots have continually broke out in games before and since. 

 

While Kurds make up for around 18% of Turkey’s population (the nation’s largest ethnic minority), Amedspor represent the separate resistance identity almost solely in Turkish football. But due to this, the obstacles they have faced perfectly represent the attitudes towards Kurds in Turkey. 

 

 

In 2015, President Erdogan won the Turkish election but in opposition to a successful campaign and electoral performance by the HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi – the Kurdish representative party in non-Kurdish areas) where they acquired over 13% of the national vote with the campaign slogan “We won’t let you be the President.”

 

Erdogan’s government, along with most of the national media, framed the HDP as the radical left opposition to the AKP’s rule and this caused the AKP to up their anti-Kurd propaganda, plans for a Kurdish Opening – the gradualist reform plan to peacefully end the Kurdish Issue by granting more cultural rights – was dashed by Erdogan after the election. 

 

Furthermore, in the year after the election, the government launched a huge increase in military intervention in Kurdish areas and installed long curfews in various Kurdish-majority cities. At the same time, Amedspor fell victim to a barrage of fines and suspension by the TFF. 

 

To display this, between 2015 and 2018, Amedspor received 63 punishments from the TFF – player suspension, team suspensions, fan suspension and fines – for various reasons mostly related to the spreading of ‘ideological propaganda’. These regular fines were incredibly difficult for Amedspor – a third division club – to cope with and stunted the club’s progression significantly and they have relied on the support and sponsorship of local businesses and funds from the Kurdish diaspora. 

 

 

Last season, Amedspor achieved promotion to the TFF First League for the first time ever, promoting thousands to take to the streets in celebration. Both the social media support and the thousands of Kurdish diasporic fans of the club around the world would suggest that Amedspor has a pull only bested by the big four clubs in Turkey. 

 

To go with their promotion, Amedspor made a move not just to take them to the next level on the pitch but their biggest PR move of all time. They appointed legendary former Fenerbahçe and Trabzonspor coach, Ersun Yanal. 

 

Yanal is the most recent coach to lead Fener to a league title, doing so in 2014. He is an elder statesman in Turkish football with a long history as a Süper Lig coach. It was a surprise to many that the first non-Süper Lig club Yanal has coached in over 20 years would be Amedspor. 

 

The news receive overwhelming amounts of coverage in Turkish sports media. Yanal had remained understated and reserved about the matter until a few weeks after the appointment. He took to the media to explain his decision. “Football is the only subject on which this country shares common feelings. Football is the unifying force of this country,” Yanal said in an recent interview.

 

 

“All my friends who know me closely are clearly aware that choosing Amedspor is a challenge.” Yanal was subject to widespread condemnation from thousands of Turkish football supporters for taking the job. “Amedspor will win everyone’s love and respect not only with what it has achieved on the field, but also with what it has done in socio-cultural terms.” 

 

While it’s an ambitious and idealistic position for Yanal to take, he does acknowledge just how difficult a task this is for him and Amedspor to tackle. This season practically every match will have the energy and appearance of a derby. Amedspor, as an institution, will no doubt be fuelled with a siege mentality that has contributed to its success up to this point. 

 

A big question that overhangs this idea though is: can Turkish fans actually grow to appreciate the competition and representation Amedspor give or will just reignite and multiply the visceral hate which already exists?

 

Would the TFF even allow Amedspor to achieve promotion to the Süper Lig without intervention? This is another key question which the answer to will be revealed over time. 

 

 

Turkish football is currently trapped in a cycle where the overall level of the league has suffered. The strength of any league or competition should not be measured by the efforts of its biggest and best participants. It should be measured by the middle-of-the-pack runners, the gap between them and the elite. 

 

This gap is widening in Turkey yet the big three are not much further along in challenging seriously in European competitions. 

 

As we see in the case of Amedspor, the symbolic presence of a resistance identity in the structure has poked holes in the establishment set by the TFF. The big three Istanbul clubs are routinely bailed out of financial worry and the emergence of a club outside that structure is needed to challenge it. 

 

With lower level Süper Lig clubs being punished for breaking financial rules, the likelihood of the big three being threatened for their domestic superiority is increasing slim. 

 

To crystallise this point, the playing field in Turkey is uneven on a socio-political and an economic level. Amedspor are faced with arbitrary barriers to success constructed with prejudice. And low-level Süper Lig clubs are halted from coming close to even 10% of the expenditure of Turkey’s big three. For a healthier functionality of the Turkish football structure, these issues need to be seriously addressed. But one can’t help but feel that part of these issues are woven deeply in Turkish society, not just it’s football. 

 

By: Louis Young / @FrontPostPod

Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Tottenham Hotspur FC

 

EmailLinkedIn