Headlines

1. Galatasaray is out of the Champions league

Let’s deal with the bad news first. I watched the first leg of the Galatasaray Steaua Bucresti matchup in a coffeeshop in Turkey. While everyone had great hopes, they just had to go and disappoint us yet again. In the fourth minute, keeper Aykut took a harmless ball and sent it to an opponent less than 10 meters away from him. 1-0. Minutes later, the Romanians found the second goal after the defense were left watching a long throw. 2-0. Although Nonda scored two great goals to tie things up, the damage was done and despite playing better in the second leg, Galatasaray will just have to make do with UEFA cup action this season.

2. Galatasaray signs Defender Fernando Meira from Stuttgart

Meira is an excellent defender. Hes everything you want in a central defender; hes tall, he reacts quickly to the ball and he clears teh ball properly, not staright into the path of an opponent. If he can team up well with Servet, we won’t be having too many problems in the central defense. Pricetag: 5,000,000 Euros.

3. Galatasaray signs Goalkeeper Morgan de Sanctis from Sevilla on a season long loan deal.

While the Galatasaray board wanted to buy another, more experienced goalkeeper, the board decided it was best to spend resources on other positions that required emergency strengthening. Instead they did the next best thing by loaning Sevilla goalie Morgan de Sanctis. de Sanctis was known for playing many seasons with Italian club Udinese and was part of the Juventus set-up a while back. His experience will greatly help us.

4. Galatasaray signs Milan Baros from Olympique Lyonnais (pictured below being attacked at the airport by the CimBom faithful)

And finally the big one. The Galatasaray board have been working for almost three month to bring a star forward to the Ali Sami Yen, and now they’ve finally succeeded. Everyone knows Milan for his great speed (both on the pitch and on French roads), his ability to get past opponents, and his ability to slam in those goals when needed. All in all, the best transfer in a very long time.

My footy plans over there are to catch a Malatyaspor match (my small towns team, currently playing in the second league), and to of course try to catch at least one Galatasaray match. Theres a chance that I might even be able to watch Galatasaray’s home qualifying match for the champions league.

So once again, keep supporting the CimBom and try to keep up by ther sources instead of mine.

Metin Oktay

The classic Galatasaray uniform. Half red, half yellow. Ever since the league began in 1957, the players have been wearing this uniform. The jersey has been dedicated to the legendary Galatasaray forward Metin Oktay who played for the team around the same time as the league started. My pick for the best uniform.

White

This year the white jersey has gone through a bit of a transformation with the addition of a yellow-red stripe to go along the right hand side. Not my type though. If they just left the stripe out it would be a clean uniform that I would love to have as my second uniform. But the stripe, while it adds the CimBom factor, isn’t someting that I personally like.

Striped

This is something new by the manufacturers. Galatasaray always had a uniform which had yellow-red stripes comeing down, but this is the first time that a uniform only has three stripes with two yellows sandwiching a red. According to the club website, the team will use this uniform primarily in the European theater. A good uniform in my opinion.

Orange

A week before the end of the season, club president Adnan Polat revealed that he would like to see an Oranje uniform next season. His reason? He always loved watching the Holland national team and wished to see his team one day wear an orange jersey. And well the pres always gets what he wants. Galatasaray have worn several colors before, red, yellow, yellow-red, black, gray, white, but this is the first time that Orange will be used. I assume that the orange uniform was chosen in the place of a black one.