conversation held with my three year-old son after standing in line for half an hour outside 19 mayis stadium on saturday afternoon. match has already started and there are still enormous queues thanks to the fact that cavcav decided to have just one gate open.
matthew: daddy, i want to watch the football now.
me: me too, but we have to wait for all the other people to get in first.
matthew: why?
me: because cavcav is an idiot.
matthew: why?
me: oh look matthew! there's some policemen on some horses.
matthew: why?
how many times has cavcav complained to the press that genclerbirligi have no fans? perhaps we don't have an enormous fanbase but there are plenty of people who are at least interested. so how do you try and get these people along to more than one match a year? open one gate in the main stand and make them stand in line for ages and miss the kick-off. but hey, cavcav perhaps saved as much as a couple of hundred lira by not employing a couple more people to man some gates.
but finally we got in... ten minutes after ko.
genclerbirligi 1 - 1 kayseri
not really a lot to say about the first half. genclerbirligi seemed to have most of the possession but as usual, bugger all shots on goal. in fact kayseri probably had the best chance but jesus in goal saved us once again.
nil-nil at half time and i was starting to get worried. this was the third time i'd taken matthew to the football and he had still to see a goal, by either side. the other kankas at the match (freaky deaky dutch, sir eski, alpine kanka and family, spine and flying dutchman kanka) started wondering whether they should kick the little fellow out as he was obviously bringing bad luck.
matthew finally got to see a goal not long after the start of the second half. well, he would have seen it if he wasn't playing with the fold-up seat. unfortunately it was kayseri who scored. some pretty bad defending and an inability to clear from a corner. 0-1. dear oh dear.
just like the first half we clearly had the majority of possession but were unable to convert. we had a number of breaks but blew them all. closest we got was a hard shot by nick carle which there keeper somehow managed to keep out.
things got brighter for me when our brazillian kahe was brought on for okan ozturk. why kahe hasn't been in the starting line-up for the last few weeks i have no idea. he immediately made a difference and when eren sent the ball in from the left it was kahe was on hand to slot the thing away. 1-1.
more of the same for the rest of the game, ie we had the ball but kayseri looked bloody dangerous in counter-attack.
one particularly scary moment towards the end when a kayseri player went down in the box. the refereee blew his whistle and pointed in the general direction of the penalty spot. moans from us but then the ref ran in having already pulled out his yellow card but instead of showing it to one of our lot and awarding a penalty he gave the card to the "diver".
according to other kankas the decision was a bit harsh, but none the less the decision not to award a penalty was correct. match petered out and that was that.
a bit of kick the water bottle footy outside the stadium and then off to the capadokia bar for the post mortem. then off for a curry, more beers and then off to the red lion for the world cup final. somehow i managed to get matthew home at some stage and even more amazingly i made it home myself. no idea how though.
