Turkish Football Suspended

[1882andallthat]

Is it the officiating that's the problem or the modern game's forensic analysis of the decisions?

Or is it the behaviour of individuals and clubs who think they can do and say whatever the hell they want when a decision goes against them ?

 

[Gassin's finest]

I'm progressively sick of the world. Why is everyone so angry?

 

[muppetman]

Just an incredible quote from the now arrested club president.

"This incident developed due to the wrong decisions and provocative behaviour of the referee. My aim was to react verbally to the referee and spit in his face,” Koca told the court, according to Demiroren News Agency.

“At this time, I slapped the referee in the face. The slap I gave would not cause a fracture. After my slap, the referee threw himself on the ground. They immediately removed me from the scene because I have a heart condition,” Koca was quoted as saying.

‘Night of shame’: Turkey suspends all football after referee is punched

Ankaragucu’s Koca entered the field and hit referee Meler in the face after the Super Lig match against Rizespor.

www.aljazeera.com

Got ourselves a future politician here I think!

 

[Marty]

The day Turkish football descended into chaos - and why it was grimly inevitable

The most shocking aspect of the attack on referee Halil Umut Meler is that it was no surprise at all

theathletic.com

When Ankaragucu president Faruk Koca strode onto the pitch and punched referee Halil Umut Meler in the head on Monday, the reaction was one of shock.

Hikmet Karaman, however, was less surprised. Karaman has been Ankarargucu’s coach several times over the years, most recently for a short spell in 2021, meaning he has had the unique pleasure of working with Koca. And, according to Karaman, this wasn’t an isolated incident.

“Faruk Koca attacked me with a punch while I was coaching Ankarargucu,” Karaman alleged on Turkish TV, shortly after the incident. “I did not say anything about it then, but I am saying something now.”

It wasn’t just Karaman’s allegations — which have been put to Ankarargucu by The Athletic — that suggested Monday night’s incident was coming. It almost felt inevitable given the corrosive culture that pervades football, and Turkey particularly, when it comes to referees.

This is the story of the 24 hours that saw the Turkish game descend into chaos.

The assault on Meler came shortly after Ankaragucu had drawn 1-1 with Rizespor. It had been a controversial match, featuring a disallowed goal and red card for Ankaragucu, as well as a late dismissal for Rizespor, but things kicked off in the 97th minute when Rizespor scored an equaliser through striker Adolfo Gaich.



Meler blew the final whistle shortly afterwards and stood by the halfway line with one of his assistants. At this point, Koca steamed onto the pitch and despite the efforts of a colleague to hold him back, delivered a right hook to Meler’s left cheekbone, immediately knocking him to the floor.

Two other men, dressed in casual clothes rather than club attire, came in from the other side and started kicking Meler while he was on the ground before an assortment of players, coaches and officials formed a cordon around the stricken referee.

With a huge bruise and swelling underneath his eye, Meler was taken to hospital in Ankara, the Turkish capital, where he was kept overnight. Koca also went to hospital: he has a history of heart problems and diabetes.


Koca was questioned by police there and was afterwards taken to a local police station. The other two men, who were not immediately named, were also taken into custody. They were said to have entered the pitch from the VIP section of the stadium.

Koca was initially unrepentant.

“I understood the accusation against me,” he said. “I had given a statement about this matter to the prosecutor’s office and the police. I will repeat these statements exactly. I absolutely do not accept the accusation against me.

“This incident occurred due to the referee’s wrong decisions and provocative behaviour. My intention was to verbally react to the referee and spit in his face. At that moment, I slapped the referee’s face. The slap I threw did not cause a fracture.

“After the slap I threw, the referee stood for about five-10 seconds, then threw himself to the ground. Due to my heart condition, they immediately removed me from the scene. I am not aware of any other incidents that took place. That’s all I have to say.”

Meler’s doctors begged to differ, confirming that he had a small fracture to his eye socket and had some bleeding, but happily didn’t seem to have suffered any graver injuries.

“Faruk Koca punched me under my left eye, I fell to the ground,” Meler said, from his hospital bed. “While I was on the ground, people kicked my face and other parts of my body many times. He said to (me and my assistant), ‘I will finish you’. Addressing me, he said, ‘I will kill you’. I am filing a complaint against him and the other people. I do not want to compromise. This is all I have to say.”

Meanwhile, in a curious subplot, the Ankaragucu head coach — Emre Belozoglu, the former Inter Milan and Newcastle United midfielder — was having his say. “I apologise to all of you for today,” he said in his post-match press conference. “There is nothing to say (except) that I am very sorry.” Reports on Tuesday suggested he was about to resign, but he remains in his job.


Then the recriminations began. Karaman went public with his allegations. The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) and football’s European and world governing bodies, UEFA and FIFA, all released statements condemning Koca’s actions. Ankaragucu tweeted a statement that said they were “saddened” and, in a terrific example of the passive voice, apologised “to the Turkish football public and the entire sports community for the sad incident that occurred”.


Later in the evening, the TFF announced that all Turkish football would be suspended indefinitely, at least until a meeting called for Wednesday, at which decisions would be made about what would happen next. National team coach Vincenzo Montella condemned the “brutal attack”, while presidents of other clubs, notably Galatasaray’s Dursun Ozbek, also expressed their outrage.

Representatives of the referees’ union, Arda Kardesler and Mete Kalkavan, announced that Turkish officials “will not play the matches unless radical and quick decisions are made”, suggesting that even if the TFF wants to continue with the fixture list, they may have to bring in referees from abroad.

Meanwhile, quite a big queue seemed to form at Meler’s hospital. The Turkish sports minister and head of the TFF popped in to offer their well wishes, while the interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, put him on the phone with President Recep Erdogan. Meler just seemed keen to go home and see his 10-day-old baby.


Dispiritingly, some others showed up at the hospital Koca was taken to: Ankaragucu fans, who arrived to show their support for their president. Not long after the incident, an Ankaragucu fan group released a statement supporting their club president. “We stand with Koca!” it read.

That’s how it stayed until Tuesday afternoon, when Ankaragucu released a statement from Koca, announcing he had resigned.

Koca said that whatever happened on the pitch on Monday, it “neither legitimises nor provides an explanation for the act of violence I committed” and that “to prevent further harm to my community and my family”, he was stepping down. He apologised to Meler, Turkish referees, Ankaragucu fans and the nation.

Koca may have some further apologising to do. He is from Ankara but has very little background in football, to the point that a couple of current and former executives of big Turkish clubs said they had never met him before when contacted by The Athletic.

He became Ankaragucu president in 2021, but his background is in politics: he was a founder member of the AKP, the party of Erdogan, and served as one of their MPs in the 2000s. It has not been officially confirmed, but reports suggest he is set to be expelled from the party. When your behaviour is beyond the pale for an authoritarian head of state like Erdogan, you know you’ve messed up.

Amusingly, Koca is a little over a year removed from receiving a fair play award from the TFF. “I will do my best to keep the fair play spirit alive,” he said, solemnly, at the time. “Receiving this award puts more responsibility on us in the steps we will take from now on.”

File under ‘one step forward, two steps back’, perhaps.

The question is: what now? There will be consequences for Ankaragucu and Koca, despite his resignation. He faces a lengthy ban from football from the TFF, with its rules allowing for up to a two-year suspension.


There could be more, though: a further TFF disciplinary rules provision states that anyone found guilty in a criminal case and sentenced to two or more years in jail is automatically banned from football for life.

And that could quite easily happen. “He could get one to three years in prison for the general charge of trying to deliberately injure someone,” says Turkish sports lawyer Anil Dincer. “But there is also a regulation specific to football — if someone deliberately tries to injure someone on the football pitch, that punishment could increase by 50 per cent. So his sentence could be up to four and a half years. Referees are like government workers, you can’t touch them.”

As for Ankaragucu, it feels inevitable that they will be forced to play games behind closed doors and fined, but Dincer says there is nothing specific in the TFF statutes that calls for any other punishment, such as a fine, points deduction or transfer ban. That said, none of those should be ruled out.

There is a broader and less tangible ‘what now?’, though. A range of people within the Turkish game, spoken to by The Athletic, said this was about more than just one president going postal. The feeling is that this moment has been inevitable, such has been the dramatic increase in anti-referee rhetoric in recent years.


Barely a week goes by without a club official declaring that some sort of vast conspiracy exists against them, for reasons unexplained.

A month ago, 2022 Super Lig champions Trabzonspor released a statement in which they declared that unfavourable decisions against them in games against Galatasaray, Hatayspor and Pendikspor were “completely intentional” and ones that they “cannot call referee error”. But this is nothing new: in February 2016, a large group of fans took to the streets brandishing red cards in protest at referee Deniz Ates Bitnel’s dismissal of four of their players in a 2-1 defeat to Galatasaray.


Fenerbahce president Ali Koc has commented that “strange referee mistakes” were happening for the whole league and that he had “lost patience” with the TFF. In the past, Koc has claimed referees were trying to “block the path” of Fenerbahce to the league title and recently suggested that if fans saw officials on the street, they should take photos of them and generally stay on their case.

Last year, Galatasaray vice president Erden Timur said they would dedicate a weekly programme on the club’s TV channel to all of the “incorrect” decisions that went against them.

We could go on, but by far the most chilling example came in 2019, when Hasan Kartal, the former Rizespor president, said after a 3-2 defeat to Galatasaray: “If I had my gun, I would have shot him (the referee). I mean it. Good thing I didn’t have one. If someone had a gun, they would have killed him.”

Monday’s events also called to mind an incident in 2022 — by coincidence, in the same stadium, the Eryaman — when a fan ran onto the pitch in an apparent attempt to attack the referee after a game between Ankaragucu and Besiktas, launching himself through a group of players and barging former Everton striker Cenk Tosun in the back.


On that occasion, Josef de Souza, Besiktas’ Brazilian defender, intervened and shoved the would-be assailant to the ground. But far from praising De Souza or even recognising that there was a problem, the TFF suspended him for one game. Afterwards, he said: “You will remember me the day they kill a player… or the day they attack a referee.” He left Besiktas at the end of last season and moved to Chinese club Beijing Guoan.

The hope is that this incident might change things; the fear is that it won’t and that people will talk about Meler and his injuries for a few weeks, then slip back into the toxic, conspiratorial rhetoric.

And this is not limited to Turkey either. So much of the discourse of modern football revolves around officiating, who got things wrong and why, flippantly tossing around accusations of corruption. Referees are already being attacked at grassroots level in the UK, among other countries.

Disagreeing with decisions is one thing, but allowing a sport’s culture to become so consumed with officiating that a club president feels empowered enough to punch a referee in the head is another.

If you think this sort of thing can’t happen anywhere else, you’re almost certainly wrong.

 

[easley91]

If you can't react to a mistake or a decision going against you in a sport with some professionalism then you only have yourself to blame. Referees are human and mistakes will happen. But to react by punching him in the face? Sorry but the referee is not at fault there.

Make comments after the game, criticise, but assault? Go get some anger management classes done.

 

[Frozen_Waffles]

To be honest I think the lack of respect towards refs from players and managers is ridiculous. They make mistakes, it happens. The leagues should come down like a ton of bricks on anyone surrounding, insulting and definitely attacking the officials.

VAR has made the situation worse, you have 50/50 decisions trying to be resolved by a panel, not only does this make things more convoluted, it also makes the decisions more contested.

That Chelsea game was the one that annoyed me, not because of the decisions themselves but the time it took to resolve it, the players were just standing about in the first half of the match for about 10 minutes waiting on VAR decisions.

Add that to absoloute dongs like Klopp and Arteta and the situation becomes even more unmanageable.

 

[muppetman]

To be honest I think the lack of respect towards refs from players and managers is ridiculous. They make mistakes, it happens. The leagues should come down like a ton of bricks on anyone surrounding, insulting and definitely attacking the officials.

VAR has made the situation worse, you have 50/50 decisions trying to be resolved by a panel, not only does this make things more convoluted, it also makes the decisions more contested.

That Chelsea game was the one that annoyed me, not because of the decisions themselves but the time it took to resolve it, the players were just standing about in the first half of the match for about 10 minutes waiting on VAR decisions.

Add that to absoloute dongs like Klopp and Arteta and the situation becomes even more unmanageable.

What confuses me, is that I thought refs could already dish out yellow cards for dissent. Surely, if they started doing so every time a player complained and swore at them, whenever they surrounded the ref etc etc etc then this would all go away quite quickly?

I agree that managers, pundits etc also need to wind their neck in but if the refs set out what was and was not acceptable it might get the ball rolling?

 

[cwy21]

What confuses me, is that I thought refs could already dish out yellow cards for dissent. Surely, if they started doing so every time a player complained and swore at them, whenever they surrounded the ref etc etc etc then this would all go away quite quickly?

I agree that managers, pundits etc also need to wind their neck in but if the refs set out what was and was not acceptable it might get the ball rolling?

Look how quickly people started to complain when refs started handing out dissent yellows in August. If there was going to be a full crackdown approach, it would need to have the full buy in of everyone involved in football. From the league, the FA, the managers, the clubs, and the refs. Because as soon as the managers start complaining about it post match it's dead.

 

[muppetman]

Look how quickly people started to complain when refs started handing out dissent yellows in August. If there was going to be a full crackdown approach, it would need to have the full buy in of everyone involved in football. From the league, the FA, the managers, the clubs, and the refs. Because as soon as the managers start complaining about it post match it's dead.

But then the refs need to grow a pair and say "control your players".

I think at some point the refs will need to go on strike or similar, otherwise a situation like Turkey feels almost inevitable - at least at a lower level than Prem.

 

[Frozen_Waffles]

What confuses me, is that I thought refs could already dish out yellow cards for dissent. Surely, if they started doing so every time a player complained and swore at them, whenever they surrounded the ref etc etc etc then this would all go away quite quickly?

I agree that managers, pundits etc also need to wind their neck in but if the refs set out what was and was not acceptable it might get the ball rolling?

They were doing it, it seems to have calmed down. After the game against City, Haaland should hace been showed a yellow and then a red if he continued to lose control.

Managers should be punished as well for failure to control players, it'll soon stop if the refs get a bit of backing from he FA

 

[muppetman]

They were doing it, it seems to have calmed down. After the game against City, Haaland should hace been showed a yellow and then a red if he continued to lose control.

Managers should be punished as well for failure to control players, it'll soon stop if the refs get a bit of backing from he FA

I'm not even sure if this is essential? It seems to me that the balance of power here is with the refs. They are the ones taking the brunt of all this and if they withdraw their services then I'm not sure where the Prem is going to just rustle up more from.

 

[spurs9]

They were doing it, it seems to have calmed down. After the game against City, Haaland should hace been showed a yellow and then a red if he continued to lose control.

Managers should be punished as well for failure to control players, it'll soon stop if the refs get a bit of backing from he FA

He was.

 

[Misfit]

Is it the officiating that's the problem or the modern game's forensic analysis of the decisions?

I really do miss just having a good moan amongst ourselves and then moving on the next day as everyone knew that ultimately shit just happens and it won't be magically reversed.

Instead we now have an endless rage spiral, often led by an increasingly hysterical media as much as traditionally one-eyed biased fans. And games with constant interruptions but somehow even more controversy thanks to VAR utterly undermining whatever authority refs previously had left without ridding the game of mistakes.

 

[cwy21]

At least this time the club president just came on the field to pull his team off to protest a ref decision instead of attacking the ref. Progress.

 

[Marty]

At least this time the club president just came on the field to pull his team off to protest a ref decision instead of attacking the ref. Progress.

They should just suspend the league again. Fucking hell.

 

[Tucker]

What a fucking basket case that league is.

 

[cwy21]

They should just suspend the league again. Fucking hell.

It's not even a ref error (not that it would justify this). Never a penalty.

 

[Marty]

It's not even a ref error (not that it would justify this). Never a penalty.

Madness. Utter madness.

 

[Spriggan]

UEFA should ban the Turkish league until they show they have their house in order, and put in place far stricter rules about this type of behavior, including dissent from players, with harsher penalties for any transgression.

 

[nailsy]

I'm progressively sick of the world. Why is everyone so angry?

Comments like this really piss me off.