eyewitness
every few years. A kind of footballing
democracy; in theory anyway. In reality,
due to a lack of checks and balances,
the system has created a monster.
Club presidents at the major clubs
only care about short-term success as
it is the only way to ensure re-election.
As a result they focus on today. Couple
that with a lack of accountability and
you have a corrosive cocktail of out
of control spending, irresponsible
governance and no long-term strategy.
As club presidents do not spend out
of pocket they are happy to squander
millions. Nobody will question them
regarding where the money went once
they are gone.
The major Turkish clubs have
millions of fans. Few clubs in the world
can compete with the support they
command. And that is what makes the
current situation of Turkish football so
tragic. It does have a lot of potential.
But it has been woefully managed.
Fenerbahce president Ali Koc has
been working towards alleviating the
crippling debt, which he has revealed
stands at £460 million. To be fair, so are
their main rivals, Besiktas, Galatasaray
and Trabzonspor. In fact, most teams
in the Super Lig are hurtling towards
economic oblivion. The league is not
in a healthy place.
The Yellow Canaries shifted towards
savvy low-cost transfers and poaching
young talents. And they have been
turning a profit in the transfer market:
last summer Vedat Muriqi was sold to
Lazio for around £16m; the year before,
Eljif Elmas joined Napoli for £14.5m.
But Turkish football can be an
unforgiving place for the traditional
powers. For the likes of Fenerbahce,
Galatasaray and Besiktas, anything
other than winning the league is an
unmitigated failure.
Koc and his board have worked
tirelessly to reduce debt, reform the
academy and modernise the way the
club operates. Ultimately, none of it will
matter in the theatre of public opinion
unless they win silverware. And after
seven years without a trophy the fans
are desperate to end the drought.
While there is no denying this isn’t
the Ozil that won the 2014 World Cup
with Germany, he is by no means at the
end of his career just yet, aged 32 years
old. And it is not exactly a final payday,
as he would have earned more had he
stayed at Arsenal. In fact, Fenerbahce
revealed that Ozil will be earning€3m
per-season on a three-year deal. There
willbea€550,000 sign-on fee and he
could earn an extra€1.75m in bonuses,
but it still works out at an 80 per cent
wage reduction. In other words he took
a pay cut to play for the Istanbul giants.
He will still be the highest-paid player
at Fenerbahce and with the current
debt situation coupled with the
weakness of the Lira to the Euro, it is by
no means a cheap transfer for the club.
But they will be able to justify it if they
win the league and receive the financial
rewards of qualifying for the Champions
League group stage.
The narrative being pushed by
Fenerbahce is simple: Ozil returning
home. At first glance, this may seem
bizarre considering he was born in
Germany, but he is of Turkish heritage
and professes that the Yellow Canaries
were his first love. Ozil has made a
big deal about his Turkish roots over
the past few years. “I grew up as a
Fenerbahce fan as a kid in Germany,”
he said on Twitter recently. “Every
German-Turkish person supports a
Turkish team when they grow up in
Germany. And mine was Fenerbahce.”
To which some Turkish fans ask: why
didn’t he opt to represent the Crescent-
Stars at international level? For them,
Ozil is having his cake and eating it.
Being brought up as the child of
immigrants often results in an identity
that isn’t binary. Ozil was raised in aworking-class neighbourhood where
most of his neighbours were Turkish or
of an immigrant background. He grew
up speaking Turkish at home before
learning German at school. Caught in
between two cultures, Ozil was once
the poster boy for social cohesion in
Germany – picking up a Bambi award
as a prime example of successful
integration in German society.
After winning the World Cup in 2014,
it was inconceivable that he would end
up quitting the national team four years
later, accusing the German FA of racism
and using him as a scapegoat for the
country’s poor display at the 2018
World Cup. The fall out centred on Ozil
posing for photographs with Turkish
president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The
events that unfolded saw the playmaker
become more vocal about his Turkish
roots. He felt he was German as long
as he was successful and didn’t step out
of line: “I am German when we win, an
immigrant when we lose,” he said after
quitting the German national team.
Perhaps a part of his decision to
move to Turkey is to connect with his
roots and to find a sense of belonging
after being rejected by his country of
birth. Many Fenerbahce fans genuinely
believe Ozil turned down other clubs to
join them because he wants to play forHome...Mesut Ozil
in his first training
session at the clubLanding...Mesut arrives at Istanbul airport