Futbol Notebook: A Turkish Guy Named Jimmy???

With the images of Portugal international Jose Bosingwa (pictured top), who got a red card over the weekend, who plays for Trabzonspor and Jimmy Durmaz (pictured middle) a Swedish international with Turkish citizenship, who kicked the winning goal for Ankara Genclerbirligi, over Trabzonspor, we are informing soccer fans around the world of the goings-on in Turkish soccer.

Unlike our good friend Ahmet Bob Turgut, we don't blog about Turkish soccer every week,  but the giant match between Istanbul powerhouses Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, which resulted in a 2-0 win for the Yellow Canaries from Fenerbahce, we thought this would be a good week for an entry on Turkish soccer.

The two goals for Fenerbahce, who played on the Asian side of Istanbul, whereas Galatasaray plays on the European side of the Bosporus, came from Turkish international Emre Belozoglu in the 23rd minute. In the second half, a second goal from Brazilian player Cristian Baronir in the 66th minute.

This was a tough week for Galatasaray as they lost to Copenhagen 1-0, thus Didier Drogba, the heart and soul of the team wasn't able to produce a goal and neither was his team.

The other Istanbul powerhouse Besiktas scored a 3-0 win over Kayserispor, but in spite of their win over the team from Kayersi, in central Anatolia, the Eagles' Matta Roman, a Brazilian international. got a red card in the second half.

It was also a good for Sivaspor, a team from Sivas, in northwest Turkey, which beat our beloved Bursaspor 2-1 thanks to two goals from Aatif Chahechouche, of Morocco; Bursaspor got a goal from another African continental player as Taye Taiwo of Nigeria scored the lone goal for the crocodiles (yes, we don't think there are any crocs in Turkey either), which reminds us that if any blog readers are contemplating a trip to the central African country of Burundi to photograph Gustave the man-eating crocodile, perhaps it's just best to say home and watch futbol and "Doctor Who"!

Here are the results from Week 11 of Turkish domestic soccer play:

Fenerbahce 2 Galatasaray 0

Ankara Genclerbirligi 3 Trabzonspor 2

Kayserispor 0 Besiktas 3

Sivasspor 2 Bursaspor 1

Konyaspor 0 Antalyaspor 2

Kasimpasha 3 Gaziantepspor 0

Karademir Karabuk 2 Rizespor 1

Eskisehirspor 2 Akhisar G.K. 0

Elazigspor 0 Kayseri Erciyespor 1

Currently, Fenerbahce is winning the league with 28 points, ahead of Kasimpasa (24 points), Sivasspor (22 pts) and BJK (21 pts).

Turkish national player Deniz Turuc, who is also a Dutch citizen, plays for the Dutch team Go Ahead Eagles, to find out how they fared in domestic play, go to our sister blog http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com


http://www.turkish-football.com/

Soccer Night-Turkey: Ah Those Altintop Twins

Merhabalar to everyone/ Herkese hello demek istedim..... Hmmm....Turkglish is perhaps not a language which is spoken much in the blogosphere, but, well we try to be original.

We made a big (insert English or Turkish obscenity here) goof last week when we said Fenerbahce was playing Swiss team FC Basel in the UEFA Europa League while English powerhouse Chelsea was playing Benefica of Portugal.

In actuality, Chelsea was playing Basel, whom they defeated, and Fenerbahce alas fell to the Portuguese side in Lisbon 3-1, which eradicated the Yellow Canaries' 1-0 win a week prior in Istanbul. Of course, since this blog is based in America (our executive editor Tilly Gokbudak, who is me, is a Turkish-American), we aren't quite sure how the aggregate system works in soccer, and we think there should be a best 2 out of 3 system instead.

Of course, Turkish futbol blogger Ahmet Bob Turgut, one of our favorite people to follow on Twitter, would have never made this mistake.

Before we go into our dated scores from last week, let's explain a few thing, starting with the twins: Hamid Altintop of GalataSaray (formerly with Read Madrid; pictured top) is the twin brother of Halil Altintop of Trabzonspor (pictured bottom). They are both 30. If for some reason, we got the two mixed up, hopefully, Ahmet Bob Turgut will correct us.

And, we have two new scores from today (Saturday): First, Kayseri upset Trabzonspor 2-1, so we image Halil is not in not in a happy mood right now, but hopefully he'll have a great olive and feta cheese Turkish kahvalti/breakfast (it's 7:30 a.m. and Sunday in Turkey as we are writing this).

We found out that Kayseri, a central Turkish team, has Icelandic national Gretar Steninsson, we presume he is one of the few Icelanders in the TPL.

But, our beloved BursaSpor doubled up on struggling OrduSpor 4-2 with two goals from Slovakian Stanislav Sestak.

The logo in the middle is of Sivasspor which beat bottom-dwelling Istanbul BB last week, but tomorrow, they have the daunting task of facing Burak Yilmaz, Didier Drogba and league-leading GalataSaray.


In leagues standings, these are the top four teams:

1. GalataSaray 65

2. FenerBahce 58

3. Besiktash 52

4. Bursaspor 50

And, here are the results from LAST weekend:

1. BursaSpor 1 Akhisar 1, tie

2.  Trabzonspor 2 Ankara GB 0

3. Elazig 1 Karabukspor 0

4. Sivasspor 4 Istanbul BB 1

5. Mersin 1 Antalyaspor 1, tie

6. Besiktash 2 OrduSpor 0

7. Fenerbahce 2 Kayseri 1

8. GalataSaray 1 GaziantepSpor 0

9. Eskisehir 2 Kasimpasha 1

We are also going to arbitrarily mention Turkish Airlines in the hopes that they will give us a free plane ticket from JFK (New York) to Istanbul.

http://www.turkish-football.com

http://www.turkishairlines.com

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com (Our sister blog)