I as soon as watched Fenerbahçe’s penalty shootout in opposition to Sevilla with an American pal.
As the strain mounted, I stood up and cheered for each Fenerbahçe purpose.
My pal checked out me, puzzled. “Aren’t they your rivals?” he requested. I smiled and stated, “Tonight they’re not Fenerbahçe – they’re just a Turkish team.”
That was the spirit.
When our golf equipment performed in Europe, we dropped the tribalism. Their victories have been our victories. We have been a soccer nation.
Today, that spirit is useless.
Turkish soccer has spiraled from passionate rivalry into poisonous factionalism. We now not sit collectively at video games.
We root in opposition to one another in Europe. We boo our personal nationwide staff gamers in the event that they put on the incorrect home jersey. And now, after years of verbal abuse, slurs and finger-pointing – we’ve crossed the road into bodily violence.
Jose Mourinho didn’t create this tradition, however he’s quickly changing into its most harmful image.
Let’s be clear: Mourinho known as Galatasaray’s supervisor a monkey. A slur that ought to’ve resulted in instant and extreme penalties. Instead, it was shrugged off, handled as a part of his “mind games.” But it wasn’t simply gamesmanship – it was racist, dehumanizing, and completely unacceptable.
Now, after Fenerbahçe’s second house loss to Galatasaray this season, Mourinho has gone even additional – bodily attacking the opposing supervisor. This isn’t a sideshow. This is a sample. This is who he’s.
Fenerbahçe, as a substitute of asking laborious questions on their decade-long title drought, has discovered consolation in outrage. The referees are accountable. The federation is accountable. The media is accountable. And now, it appears, even bodily assault could be justified within the identify of frustration.
Mourinho’s techniques – verbal provocation, victimhood narratives, emotional manipulation – are being embraced, not rejected. But this isn’t the trail to success. It’s a quick monitor to ethical and cultural chapter.
What Turkish soccer wants proper now’s reflection, not retaliation. A return to the times when rivalries fueled development, not collapse. When a Galatasaray fan may cheer for Fenerbahçe in Europe and imply it. When we believed, even only for one evening, that they have been only a Turkish staff.
We can nonetheless get again there. But not by following Mourinho.
Source: www.dailysabah.com