genclerbirligi set for cup semi-finals... or are we?
in temperatures below zero and snow on the ground a crowd of some 200 people showed up to watch genclerbirligi - bucaspor. obviously, i was watching at the red lion club.
turkish cup quarter-final (first leg)
genclerbirligi 2 - 0 bucaspor
a strange starting line-up with no pektemek, no jedinak and cem can and ermin zec on the substitute bench. bad selection? or perhaps resting up players for sunday's league match? who knows.
talk about domination. genclerbirligi had some 74 percent of first half possession but bugger all chances. hursut had a couple of shots, some good, some bad, but playing with a single man up front (mununga) and failing to use the wings much at all meant that us fans got to watch some finely tuned athletes, and mununga, running around in the cold seemingly without reason.
all rather frustrating especially as buca were pretty average. half time and it is amazing what a simple change makes, with zec coming on for harbuzi. we started to look a lot better and then hursut was taken off for cem can. i love hursut but last night he was pretty crap.
finally we started to use the wings well and it was from there that yasin sent a lovely ball across the ground curling away from the goal to an outstretched zec who sent it in. some 73 minutes in and we finally had a goal.
a couple of minutes later and we went two up thanks to a terrible mistake by a buca defender who attempted to send out a ball that was going to miss the goal by a mile but instead sent it in the back of the net.
it would have been a great goal if it had have been one of our guys on the end of it.
so, a 2 - 0 victory should be enough to see us through to the semi-final. i say it should be enough but with gencler you never know. we play buca in the league on sunday, and then buca for the second-leg of the quarter-final on thursday. three victories in a row would certainly do good for team morale - even if the opposition are crap.
