gencler lose at home for the second time this season
world football needs to be run by an australian! someone from the antipodean aussie football downunder association who knows what it is like having to compete in an uber-male society for advertising revenue and tv rights money against hard sports like rugby union, rugby league and australian aerial ping pong rules! there's no messing about in those games, no namby-pamby diving and pretending to be injured bullshit. what the mersin goalkeeper pulled off on saturday night was a disgrace. his time-wasting antics were the epitome of all that is wrong with the game that we love.
having said that, gencler were crap.
genclerbirligi 1 - 2 mersin
just little oz kanka and me on saturday with spine pulling out at the last minute. apparently he had to pack his bags at the last minute for a trip to dubai where his work are putting him through a defensive security skills programme. no doubt they have heard about the ankaragucu board's plans to nobble him to prevent any more in depth reporting on their debt situation.
a big crowd for gencler, the biggest of the season so far and hopes were high. the team seemed up for it but i'm not sure that some of the players had even woken up by the time of the kick-off.
both sides played attacking football and the first half was fairly enjoyable. shots were made, but either easily saved or sent out, by both teams and it was probably herve tum who went closest with a good shot late in the half that went out for a corner off a defender.
almost forgot that we probably should have been given a penalty in the first few minutes when oktay was brought down in the box. ref didn't give it though.
so we had been playing okay but i was extremely disappointed with soner. at times he had no idea where the ball was ("it's behind you"), other times he just blasted it to no one at all. dismal stuff.
second half and... oh... mersin score. i can't remember much but it seemed a fairly good goal... i think.
then the mersin keeper hakan started to play the cynical game. you know what i mean, taking forever to take a goal kick. collecting the ball, immediately kicking it out and then pretending to have been injured whilst collecting the ball. it was annoying, but having watched so much turkish football it was clear the referee wasn't going to penalise him. parts of the gencler crowd started swearing at him, which prompted the older fans to tell them to shut up. we are a gentlemanly club and we don't don't swear, at least not in unison.
then nobhead scored for mersin, after what seemed a foul on aykut (but i could be wrong on that), and we were down 0-2 with injury time to be played.
it was pretty much all over and then two minutes into injury time we got a penalty which azofeifa slotted home. our players rushed into the goal only for the mersin keeper hakan to pick up the ball and refuse to let go. he walked out of the goal and off the pitch, still refusing to let go of the ball. the referee eventually came in and one of our lot got a yellow card, as did hakan.
this ungentlemanly act thus released us gencler fans from our own gentlemanly code and for the first time in the 10 years or so that i've been watching gencler the entire maraton were swearing in unison. this was a display of pure petty cynicism that brings the game into disrepute. if football really wants to be a man's game and not some school playground kick around then cheats like hakan need to be penalised.
