you know those posts where i whinge and whine about how we were the better team but still managed to lose? this is not one of them.
fenerbahce 2 - 0 genclerbirligi
millions of gencler fans descended upon the oz kanka household on saturday night... well, spine showed up. lig tv have a promotion at the moment and are showing one game for free each week. this is of course great for those of us who can remember the good ol' days of the 1980s when watching football was a human right! it was on free-to-air tv! and... er... we got possibly one match a week.
beers and home-made pizza and strange sounds from the telly. the fener fans were singing but it was at a much higher pitch than usual as only women and children and footballers and emre belozoglu were allowed into the stadium.
i have mixed thoughts about the banning of men at stadiums thing. this has nothing to do with male human rights; we have been horrible for millenia. it is to do with the whole "this is a punishment" thing. is it? fenerbahce still got a crowd. they still get home support. i think it is great for so many people to get to do something they would normally never get the chance to do. ie go and experience a live football match, it's just that ... is this really a punishment?
anyway the crowd certainly got what they wanted as fenerbahce played some brilliant football. we only really had one chance all match when ugur ciftci got the ball on the left-wing. no faffing about or anything he smashed a high cross in to jimmy who either failed to get on top of it properly or he tried to lob the wonderfully hirsute volkan. it went out. it was one hell of a cross though and was the only really positive attack we had.
fenerbahce just blew us apart. they were attacking at will. our defenders were brave, putting in plenty of last man tackles. ramazan was looking nice but had to be taken off with a hand injury.
it was a scary passage of play. the ball went into the box, ramazan rushed forward to take it but a fener player had the ball sort of knocked out of his hands and ball went into the back of the net. the screaming from the stadium was ear bursting, but the referee correctly called the foul. unfortunately, ramazan had injured his hand and had to be replaced by our third-choice keeper ferhat.
two questions.
where was our second-choice keeper, johan dahlin? we only bought him a couple of months ago?
ramazan had injured his hand. so why the hell did he get stretchered off. be a man and walk off!
0-0 at half-time and genclerbirligi were very lucky to still be in it.
second-half and again, it was all fener. but they just couldn't find the net. ferhat in goal was great, as were our defenders.
and then...
referee blows up and points to the spot. "no!!!!!!!!!" we cried. "that was never a handball!" ante kulusic even pulled down his shirt to show where on the shoulder the ball hit. "that's a disgr...." we started to say until we saw the replay and saw that it was one of the more obvious handballs ever.
emre scored.
a few minutes later and again cuneyt cakir pointed to the spot. "no!!!!!!!!" we cried. "that was a dive you moron." replays proved it was indeed a dive. in fact a bloody obvious dive and in my opinion.
emre scored again.
gosso had a pretty average night i thought but he had all of us wincing when he planted a foot squarely into the downstairs equipment area of dirk kuyt. "no!!!!!!!!" we didn't cry, because cakir didn't pull out a card. looking at the replays, mrs. kuyt reacted with complete shock and horror. it was pretty shocking and i think gosso is very lucky not to have been shown a straight red.
