Fenerbahçe-Sivasspor Soccer Game, August 25
One of the most popular and important pastimes in Turkey is football (soccer for us), and it shows; fans decked out in jerseys and team colors are everywhere, and almost every bar and restaurant has televisions so their patrons can watch important matches while they eat or drink. We are fortunate in that our Turkish host students, Ertu and Özay, are both very big football fans, but we learned very soon that the teams they support are huge rivals. Özay supports Fenerbahçe, last year’s champions, while Ertu is a fan of Galatasaray, another powerful and popular team in Turkey. The teams’ fans are easy to mistake at first; their jerseys both prominently feature logos of Avea, a local cellphone company, and Cola Turka, a local brand of soda. However, the rivalry between these teams and their fans is decades old, and we learned quickly not to mistake one for the other at the risk of greatly offending our Turkish friends.
We would have liked to give both Özay and Ertu an equal chance to sway our Turkish football loyalties by letting them each take us to a game, but unfortunately Galatasaray is currently banned from playing in front of audiences because of problems with rioting last season. Thus, Fenerbahçe became our team of choice, and Özay took us to see them play against Sivasspor, a team based east of Ankara, on Saturday, August 25. In preparation we all went out and bought Fener jerseys, hats, and armbands. This was a necessary precaution, as Chaz and I were nearly mistaken for Belgian fans when we went with Özay to watch Fener play a Belgian team at a bar earlier in the trip. The whole lot of us decked out in yellow and navy blue was quite a sight to see; Özay, of course, was ecstatic, while Ertu looked completely miserable the entire night.
Before I talk about the Fenerbahçe-Sivasspor game, I should give a brief history of the sport and an outline of its place in Turkish culture, as well as the history of the Fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü (Fenerbahçe Sporting Club). The earliest officially recognized version of football was played in ancient China; called cuju, it developed between 400 and 200 B.C. After years of dispute, FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the sport’s main governing body) announced that historical records of cuju guaranteed that China was, in fact, the birthplace of what we now know as football. Another ancient ancestor of the game was the Roman’s harpastum, a game that also may have been an ancestor of rugby and American football. A cruder version of the game was played in medieval Europe; known as “mob football”, it basically consisted of an unlimited number of players from different villages doing anything possible to drag a pig’s bladder to their opponents’ side of the village (or to the balcony of their opponents’ church).
Modern football developed in England in the 1500’s, primarily due to the efforts of schoolchildren and their teachers to turn it into a rule-based game that was fun, organized, and healthy. The rules weren’t written down until the 1800’s, however, when a number of schools including Eton College and Cambridge University attempted to codify the game. Football currently follows the “Laws of the Game”, the first set of which were drawn up by Ebenezer Cobb Morley and approved by the Football Association (England’s governing body for the sport) in 1863. In 1997 the International Football Association Board adopted the modern Laws of the Game; these are 17 rules that outline how the game must be played.
Turkish football has had a long and difficult history; the game was outlawed under the Ottoman Empire, so its early teams were composed primarily of English, Armenian, Greek, and Jewish players. So strict were the laws of the Ottomans that Black Stockings FC, the first Turkish team, had its first match stopped by the police, and many of its players were arrested. The sport continued to grow, however, with the formation of the first league, the Istanbul Football League; Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray were both formed to play in this league. A number of other leagues sprouted up over the country, but the first official professional league (the Turkish First Football League) wasn’t formed until 1959. This is the league that still represents the highest-class football in the country, although it is now known as the Turkcell Super League. The League currently consists of a revolving door of 18 teams, with the three who finish in the lowest three spots at the end of each season relegated to the Turk Telekom League A, and that League’s three best teams promoted to the Super League. In the nearly 50 years since the Super League has been active, only four teams have ever won a championship; these are Fenerbahçe SK, Galatasaray SK, Beşiktaş JK, and Trabzonspor.
Fenerbahçe SK was formed in 1907, although it is claimed that it descended from the previously mentioned Black Stockings FC. Its namesake is the Fenerbahçe section of the Asian side of Istanbul; this, in turn, is named for a large lighthouse that is a prominent part of the area’s landscape (fener means “lighthouse”, while bahçe means “garden” or “yard”). While the club is best known for its football squad, it also provides teams in such sports as basketball, volleyball, boxing, and even table tennis. Since its inception a century ago, the Fener football club has won 17 Super League Championships, and is currently participating in its 5th UEFA Champions’ League competition; this is one of the most prestigious international football competitions in the world. Another notable Fenerbahçe fact is that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and hero of the modern Turkish Republic, was a Fener fan.
As for the game we saw, it was a very exciting one; I am a huge football fan, but I have never had the chance to go to a professional game. I was particularly excited by Fenerbahçe’s recent acquisition of Roberto Carlos, a famous and very talented Brazilian player who was transferred from Spain’s Real Madrid. Games are always that much more fun when you know the players, and I was looking forward to seeing such a world-class player in action. He definitely lived up to my expectations, scoring the game’s only goal with an amazing diving header in the middle of the first half. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any other goals, but there was still plenty of excitement; we spent most of our time yelling at the ref for what we felt were biased calls, and taking part in the stadium-wide cheers. My favorite was one that translated to “Yellow! Navy blue! Champions! Fener!” It was short, simple, and easy to remember, but it took quite a good deal of organization to carry out; the fans in each quadrant of the stadium took one phrase of the four-phrase cheer and chanted it in turn, so it went in circles around the field.
We all had a great time at the game, as the pictures show; Özay ensured that we were on our feet and cheering as often as possible, and the energy and enthusiasm of the crowd were impossible to ignore. This was one of the first times that I truly felt less like a tourist and more like a Turk. I may not have known the words to all the cheers, but I screamed anyway, and proudly wore the yellow and navy blue just like all the rest of the supporters in the stands. We were all glad to see Fenerbahçe win, and we certainly hope for more chances to take part in such an exhilarating event in Ankara.
