Say “No!” to Turkish Stadiums!!!, Sivasspor 2-0 Galatasaray

By: Musab | January 26th, 2009

The match on Saturday was another example of points lost due to Third-world Turkish stadiums and malicious Turkish referees. The pitch was completely frozen, the radiators in the visiting dressing room was broken, and football was simply not played. The reaction of Milan Baros after seeing the frozen pitch was pitiful.

SİVASSPOR:2 GALATASARAY:0

Stadium: 4 Eylül
Referee: Yunus Yıldırım

SİVASSPOR: Petkoviç, Sedat, Bilica, Abdurrahman, Murat Sözgelmez, İbrahim, Musa, Onur, Muhammed Ali (min. 46 Balili), Tum(min. 57 Sezer) , Mehmet Yıldız
Manager: Bülent Uygun

GALATASARAY: Sanctis, Volkan, Sabri, Emre, Hakan, Ayhan, M.Topal, Barış (min. 74 Aydın), Arda, Ü.Karan,, Baros (min. 60 Yaser)
Manager: Micheal Skibbe

Goals: min. 51 Abdurrahman, min. 66 Sezer
Red Cards: Ümit Karan
Yellow Cards: Yaser, Emre, Sabri

There was no football being played. For the first half, Galatasaray dominated game play with Sivasspor putting 11 players behind the ball and us trying to take advantage of the slightest of gaps in the Sivasspor defense (team). Of course that came to nothing.

However the linesman had a different plan for the night, to make sure Galatasaray would drop points today. After first calling Milan on the slightest of offsides, he decided to have a go at Umit Karan. After a blatant foul was not awarded, Umit suffering from the pain of slamming down onto the rock hard icy pitch, decided to swing at the ice. Apparently the linesman didn’t like that a couple of drops of water wettened his uniform and decided to call over the referee to send off Umit with a red card.

The referee would later claim that Umit Karan cursed at him despite the linesman repetitvely told other players that he was wettened from Umits attack on the ice. Video evidence prove that Umit didn’t curse at him.

The second half began with a Sivasspor counter attack which was turned into a goal after a blatant offside, which wasn’t called by the same linesman that ejected Umit, and a defensive breakdown by our makeshift defenders. Sivasspor continued to play their negative defensive football and found a second goal after another counter attack in which the ball bounced on the ice and ended in front of a Sivasspor player who turned in for a goal. 2-0 to Sivas which puts them four points ahead of us at the top of the table and gave them their first win over us since they first reached the top tier of Turkish football.

While the Turkish media are clammering about how Sivas just might win the title after this performance, I think this match is prime proof of why Sivas is not going to win the title. They did NOTHING to win the match and if it wasn’t for the retarded referees and the third-world stadiums, Galatasaray would have gone on to defeat Sivas. Let’s not forget that the team was made up of young Turkish players and De Sanctis. I guess this was the only way Sivas would ever defeat us. Through sheer luck and fortune. I hope we get the chance to relegate them next year, or even better, the last game of the season for us will be at home against Sivasspor. Hopefully we can celebrate with Sivas as our “distinguished guests”.

Despite this loss, Im still very optomistic. We’re only four points behind the pretenders and two behind the deluded fools. As long as we continue with our hot streak that we had before this debacle, we will soon be where we belong, at the top.