i had no idea until after i got home but it seems as if ermin zec today scored genclerbirligi's 1,000th home goal. useless statistic? yes. do i care? no. all i gave a damn about was the result and that has brought a big smile to my face.
genclerbirligi 3 – 1 mersin idmanyurdu
last week i was out bicycling around, soaking up the sun around eymir lake. watching the ducks frolic about and generally being thankful for the man-made climate change that had turned the usual dog-days of february into an idyllic spring festival.
all that has changed though and so it was with gloves and scarves and jackets and thermal underwear and other stuff that @spinesideburn and bernard joined me at the beer bus for today's match.
it was a pretty decent crowd considering the temperatures and the opposition. the same sort of match a couple of years ago would have got us a few hundred supporters, today there were a few thousand.
onto the match and well.... er...
mersin seemed to attack at the start, but nothing really eventuated. gencler sort of passed it about a bit but didn't look too sharp. bjorn had a decent chance at about the 13th but it was converted for a corner.
it was all a bit “meh” even though we started to dominate the half. then the spark that the match needed come from a corner from tomic in about the 32nd which found bjorn's head and was in.
one-nil up and half-time came around. the consensus was that the match wasn't the best but we certainly deserved to be ahead.
second-half and we put the knife in.
except for some strange refereeing decisions, cards to aykut and ante could prove to be annoying later on, we were pretty much in control. then a free kick outside the box that was beautifully taken by jimmy and beat the keeper.
not that much later ermin zec was brought on and within seconds he latched onto a defensive mistake near the half-way line, ran through and struck it left-footed just inside the left hand side of the box... the keeper had no chance.
three-nil up and still a good 30 minutes to play. i reckon we should have scored some more but... well... i don't care we were still 3-0 up.
sort of towards the end mersin were awarded a penalty (i'm not sure if it was deserved) and they finally got onto the scoreboard. mersin kept up the attacks and ramazan was finally forced to make some saves but generally mersin didn't look very threatening.
and so gencler stay in the hunt for that glorified place that is ninth on the table.
