Turkish Futbol Notebook: A Wild Tie Game in Istanbul

Argentinian soccer player Fernando Belluschi (pictured) of Bursaspor may get overshadowed by this countrymen and Bursaspor teammate Pablo Battala, but they won a game on the road against Elazigspor 2-1. The game also saw red cards for Serdar Aziz of Bursaspor and Pepe Sow of Elazigspor.

Trabzonspor won its home game over Kayseri Erciyesspor 3-1 with two goals from Florent Malouda of France.

And, finally, there was a zany Istanbul derby match between powerhouses Fenerbahce and Besiktash which ended in a 3-3 draw. The highlights of the game included goals from Fener's star Moussa Sow of Senegal (77th min) and Dirk Kurt of the Netherlands (83rd min). For BJK, Portuguese national Hugo Almeida had two goals very close to each other (43 min. and 45th min.) The game also saw two red cards!

Here are scores from domestic weekend play in Turkey:

Eskisehirspor 0 Karademir 0 (tie)

Kasimpasa 1 Galatasaray 1 (tie)

Trabzonspor 3 Keyseri Erciyesspr 1

Fenerbahce 3 BJK 3 (tie)

Elazigspor 1 Bursaspor 2

Anakara GB 1 Gaziantepspor 3

Kayserispor 0 Akhisar 0 (tie)

Konyaspor 2 Rizespor 1

Sivasspor 0 Antalyaspor 3

http://www.flashscore.com

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)

Sports Desk- GalataSaray 3 Besiktash 2

The Swedish national player Johan Elmander is our poster boy for the day as he kicked in two goals in the 15th and 91st minutes respectively to help Istanbul powerhouse win a crucial home game over arch rival from the other side of the Bosporus with a 3-2 win over Besiktash on Sunday.

Felipe Melo, a Brazilian national, also scored for the yellow and red in the 52 minute.

For the Besiktash (BJK) side Turkish national Ibrahim Toraman scored in the 49th minute. BJK was also helped by an own-goal from GalataSaray's Semih Kaya in the 73rd minute which assuredly horrified the fans at Ali Sam Yen Stadium. Toraman's old team Sivasspor fared slightly better as they came away with a 3-3 over Ankara Genclerbirligi, one of two cities representing the capital city in the league. Their rival Ankaragucu fell to Karabukspor 3-2.

Even without the GS-BJK game, it was a huge weekend in Turkish Premiere League play as two major upsets occurred.

Eskisehir upset Fenerbahce, the third Istanbul powerhouse Fenerbahce 2-1 with goals from Bulent Ertugul (31st minute) and French-Senegalese player DiOmansy Kamara (55). Ironically, the Senegalese star player Moussa sow scored for FB in the team's lone goal during the 75th minute of play.

In spite of a goal from the star Turkish-German player Halil Altintop (his twin brother Hamid Altintop plays for Real Madrid, both players play for Turkey) in the 60th minute, Trabzonspor fell to Mersin Idmanyurdu 3-2. Olcan Aydin scored the other goal for Trabzonspor, while two goals from Mert Nobre and one goal from Hasan Ucuncu helped the team from Mersin pull the upset. Coming into the game, Trabzonspor, a team that is also competing in the UEFA Champions League, wasin fifth and Idmanyurdu was in 11th place in league standings.

Our beloved Crocodiles from BursaSpor won 3-0 over Samsunspor with goals from the popular Argentinian player Pablo Battalla (14th minute) as well as Musa Cagiran (68the min.) and Turgay Bahadir (88th min.).

Gaziantep scored a 2-0 win over Manisa with goals from Muhammet Demir and Cenk Tosun; while Orduspor beat Kayseri 1-0 on a goal from Yalcin Ayhan.

Here are the complete results:


Eskisehirspor 2 Fenerbahce 1
Orduspor 1 Kayseri 0
Karabukspor 3 Ankaragucu 2
Gaziantep 2 Manisa 0
Bursaspor 3 Samsunspor 0

Anakara Genclerbirligi 3 Sivasspor 3, tie
Istanbul BB 4 Antalyaspor 0
Idman Yurdu (Mersin) 3 Trabzonspor 2
GalataSaray 3 BJK 2

UEFA Madness: Those Darn Ruskies

Since I'm a Turkish-American, I was hoping that Black Sea power Trabzonspor, the lone Turkish team in the UEFA Champions League, would pull through as they were expected to. But, CSKA Moscow went to Milan, Italy, and pulled a stunning 2-1 upset over Group B leader Inter Milan. This eliminated not only Trabzonspor, but the French team Lille. Trabzonspor and Lille played to a 0-0 tie yesterday.

Hence, we are posting an image of Misha the Bear from the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and in what is simply a ploy to arbitrarily get more hits on this blog, we are also featuring the famed 1993 "Sports Illustrated" switsuit issue with the Swedish supermodel Vendela, who is now 43 and reportedly newly single.

The goals for CSKA Moscow were scored by Seydou Doumbia, an Ivory Coast national, in the 50th minute of play, and Valli Berztutzki in the 86th minute. The Argentinian player Esteban Cambiasso score for Inter Milan in the 51st minute.

In Group C, there were some stunning developments as well as traditional English powerhouse and reigning UEFA runner-up Manchester United failed to qualify for the round of 16 as they fell to the Swiss team FC Basel 2-1. The Swiss side's goals came from Marco Streller (9th min.) and Fabian Frei (84th min.), both Swiss nationals while the lone Manchester United goal came from 19-year-old wunderkid Alex Jones late in the game.

FC Basel is also the team with Pak Kwang Ryong, the lone North Korean player in the UEFA Champions League and the first ever North Korean player to play in the tournament. He made his debut in a match at Manchester United on Sept. 14th.

The other team to advance from Group C was Benefica (Portugal) as they beat Otelul Galati (Romania) 1-0 on the road. Oscar Cardoza scored for the winning side a mere seven minutes into match play.

Here is a complete list of the scores from Wednesday's UEFA action, rundowns on the other four games will be on our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time:"

*- Teams which advanced

y- Teams which won their groups

Group A

Napoli (Italy) 2 Villareal (Spain) 0

Manchester City 2 *y Bayern Munich 0

Group B

*CSKA Moscow 2 *y Inter Milan 1

Trabzonspor 0 Lille 0, tie

Group C

*y Benefica 1 Otelul Galati 0

* FC Basel 2 Manchester United 1

Group D

*y Real Madrid 3 Ajax Amsterdam 0

* Lyon (France) 7 Dinamo Zagred (Croatia) 1

SIDEBAR: There was also a major domestic game in Turkish soccer yesterday as two of the three main Istanbul rivals Galatasaray and Fenerbahce met (the third Istanbul power team is Besiktash), and it was Galatasaray which prevailed 3-1. The goals for the winning yellow and reds came from Emmanuel Eboue, yet another Ivory Coast player who is shinning in European soccer, John Elmanders, a Swedish national and Felipe Melo of Brazil. It was another Brazilian national Alex de Souza, who is also the Fenerbahce captain, who scored the lone goal for the yellow and blues.

Sports Desk- Istanbul Powerhouses Have Solid Weekend in Soccer

Back in the '70s and '80s, "Monday Night Football" was a regular American sports spectacular. It seems that Europeans have taken their own liking to "Monday Night Futbol" as major games were played today in Turkey, England, Spain and Italy_ and those are just the ones we are aware of.

In Turkey, it was a great weekend for the three traditional powerhouses. Today (Monday), one of those three titans Besiktas scored a 2-1 win over Orduspor, a team from Ordu in the far-eastern Black Sea, in the neutral Mediterranean tourism mecca of Antalya.

The first goal of the game, according to Besiktas' web site, came from Turkish-Austrian player Veli Kavlak in the 36th minute of play. Argentinian national Culio scored the equalizer for Orduspor in the 66th minute. But, it was a solid header from German star Fabian Ernst (pictured here) which clinched the game for Besiktas.

Another Istanbul power Fenerbahce drubbed last place Ankara Gucu 4-2 with goals from Slovakian star and former Chelsea player Miroslav Stoch (18th and 58th mins.), Brazilian player Cristian (51st min.) and Senegal national Issia Dia (88th min.).

For the third traditional giant, Galatasaray's Emmanuel Eboue, an Ivory Coast national and former Arsenal player, scored the team's lone goal in the 71st minute for a 1-0 victory over Ankara Genclerbirligi.

Eskisehirspor beat our beloved Bursaspor Crocs 1-0 on a goal from Brazilian player Dede in 87th minute of play. And, Trabzonspor, a team that is also playing in the UEFA Champions League, tied Sivasspor 2-2 with a goal from former Bursapor star Volkan Sen in the 69th minute of play. Erman Kilic, a wingback, scored a late goal for Sivasspor in the 75th minute for the tie.

Fenerbahce is currently first in league play with 28 points; followed by Galatasaray with 25 points and the very surprising Manisaspor with 23 points.

Here are the scores for the entire Turkish Premiere League from this week; Galatasaray and Fenerbahce are reportedly going to play on Wednesday as Trabzonspor, which is in fourth place domestically, faces French power Lille in the UEFA Champions League on that same day:

Sivasspor 2 Trabzonspor 2, tie

Gaziantepspor 1 Samsunspor 0

Galatasaray 1 Ankara Genclerbirligi 0

Fenerbahce 4 Ankara Gucu 2

Antalyaspor 2 Karabukspor 1

Kayersispor 1 Istanbul BB 0

Idman Yurdu (Mersin) 0 Manisaspor 0, tie

Eskisehirspor 1 Bursaspor 0

Besiktas 2 Orduspor 1

For more info on the latest developments on Turkish soccer, we highly recommend following Ahmet Bob Turgut on Twitter (twitter.com/turkishsoccer) or on his blog at (turkeyfootball.blogspot.com).

As for the Greek soccer game we mentioned earlier in the week, Olympiacos previaled over Panatlikos 2-0; they now have the daunting dask of playing Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League tomorrow. Another Greek soccer power AEK Athens won its game over Kekrya 1-0.

CORRECTION: In our last entry, ee incorrecly stated that the previous record from The Cars came out in 1985; it came out in 1987 and the current release is the seventh one from the band (it's already been corrected!).

UPDATE: West Virginia University did indeed win their 'free mustache giveaway' home game over Boston University by a 78-53 score, which we mentioned on Saturday. Asya Bussie had 17 points and 10 rebounds for the winning Mountaineers. Turkish player Deniz Kilicli plays for WVU's men's basketball team.

Quote of the Day- Franz Beckenbauer

Today, in our series of quotes from famous Germans, we quip the great German soccer player Franz Beckenbauer, 66, who was credited with inventing the modern sweeper/libero position and who is one of many legendary soccer players who played for Bayern Munich.

Beckenbauer helped then West Germany win the World Cup in 1974, and he helped Bayern Munich win three straight European soccer titles from 1974-76. The German soccer great also played in the first incarnation of pro soccer in America with the New York Cosmos from 1977-80, '83 (Today's MLS team in New York is called the Red Bulls).

Here is his quoteL

"Certainly, it is a different world for players nowadays. But, it depends on the individual."

SIDEBAR: Many of today's top German soccer players are of Turkish origin. These players often get caught up in the politics of whether to play for Germany or Turkey. Interstingly enough, the current roster of Real Madrid, believed to be the best team in Europe, consists of three such players in superstar Mesut Ozil, Hamit Altintop and Nuri Sahin.

Ozil chose to play for Germany, while Altintop and Sahin chose to play for Turkey. In a 3-0 defeat to Croatia on Friday, Altintop reportedly made an amazing dive which has become popular on Youtube. Hamit Altintop's twin brother Halil Altintop plays for the Turkish team Trabzonspor, which is also competing in the UEFA Cup.