By Furkan Naci Top
ISTANBUL
It has been a dangerous season for Turkish football managers.
As the Super League roars back into action this weekend after a two-week break, 11 coaches have already been shown the door -- more than half of those managing the country's top-flight sides.
This fact has not surprised fans. As the bad results keep coming, club executives usually and easily put the blame on coaches. Last year, the same scenario was played out 13 times and the season before, poor results cost 10 managerial scalps.
However, this instability in coach circulation has not been the main focus point for discussion in the first half of the season.
The Turkish Football Federation has made a revolutionary amendment to its foreign player quota, increasing the number to 14 from the current maximum of eight per squad.
It generated reaction from different football pundits, executives and players but the most interesting comments came from Bursaspor's leading coach, Senol Gunes.
"Number 14 must be someone's lucky number because I do not get why it was not 11, 12 or 15," said Gunes, who previously led Turkey’s national side in the 2002 World Cup.
Many defended the foreign player quota. Fatih Terim -- current coach of the national team -- said it was a well-thought-out decision.
During a bold speech, in which he promised to reveal that "the emperor wears no clothes," Terim referred to another long-stalled issue -- that of youth training in football clubs.
Claiming in one outburst that "If we had Messi, we would destroy him," Terim -- himself nicknamed "The Emperor" -- said:
"First of all we would call him ‘feeble.’ He would be pushed around by his bulky and older peers in youth setups. We would even ridicule him as calling him ‘dwarf.’"
It might not have been the case for Messi if he had been playing for Ankara's Genclerbirligi; Turkey's most middle-class, mid-table team uses 11 first-pick players drawn its own youth squad.
In this gloomy picture, happier news came from Besiktas and Trabzonspor, which both qualified for the Europa League. Galatasaray, however, bid farewell to the Champions League with only one point to show in a dismal European campaign.
Expectedly, the two qualifying teams became the most interesting club for sports journalists as transfer rumors surfaced on daily basis, while Galatasaray is busy with culling players from its bloated squad.
Samuel Eto'o, Edin Dzeko, Memphis Depay and Alexander Meier were some of the scorers, who made newspapers headlines.
Besiktas already signed a Swedish defender, Alexander Milosevic, and bolstered its right wing with Daniel Opare.
Trabzonspor attracted all the attention as they nabbed a real Eskisehirspor talent from their foes Fenerbahce; Erkan Zengin, a Swedish national of Turkish origin, appeared in Trabzon airport -- as much to his surprise as anyone else -- as cheering fans let off flares as he arrived.
The Black Sea team made the deal even though Zengin himself had declared that he wanted to play for Fenerbahce.
Trabzon hold a bitter rivalry with Fenerbahce stemming from 2011 when they lost a head-to-head championship to the Istanbul club which was later embroiled in a match-fixing investigation, blurring the picture further.
Fenerbahce's chairman, Aziz Yildirim, who spent a year in jail during investigations into alleged match fixing, is currently being retried and has filed a complaint, accusing prosecutors and policemen of plotting against him.
Yildirim, high-profile Fenerbahce boss for the last 17 years, also hit the headlines in October when he allegedly burst into a referee’s dressing room during a halftime break and threatened the match official.
Yildirim denied the allegation but defied critics, saying he “would do it, if it is necessary," although referees had awarded Fenerbahce six penalties by the season's 14th week.
If one is looking for how passionate Turkish people are about football, Abdurrahim Albayrak, Galatasaray's vice chairman, is possibly the best example.
He reached another level in December when he broke his teeth out of anger during a game against Mersin, as defender Aurelien Chedjou lost the ball.
Albayrak, after surgery for his mouth, announced jokingly he would claim the cost of the operation back from Chedjou.
Passion and debate lie ahead in the second half of the season. Fenerbahce currently tops the league with a narrow lead, as the two other Istanbul giants eye first place.
