Tag: soccer

Hypnotized by Futbol

By far the most popular sport in Turkey is soccer, or as they call it futbol (football). This snapshot was taken on Istiklal Caddesi during the match of Turkey’s two biggest teams, both coming from Istanbul: Fenerbahçe versus Galatassaray. It’s one of the top 10 derby’s in Europe and one of the most exciting games for futbol fans across Turkey and especially in Istanbul. People in shops were following the match on the radio, waiters watching on televisions (as you can see in the above pic) or if they don’t have a TV in their restaurant you can see the waiters running around the corner whenever they can to look at a TV through the window of a nearby shop or restaurant.

How popular is soccer/futbol/football in your country? What do you call it? What other sports are very popular in your country?

I’m off to Bulgaria for a few days but posting will continue. You can stay up to date by following my Twitter feed, or subscribe to this blog by RSS or email.

November 19, 2008
The Orange Dream

It’s over. Done. During the qualifications, Dutch coach van Basten got a lot of criticism, but when the Euro 2008 was there, he amazed everyone. Fans, being skeptical and pessimistic about the Dutch team’s prospects, partly because of Holland’s spot in the ‘group of death’, were surprised by the team’s great victory over France. Hope grew, orange fever exploded and increasingly people started talking about Holland’s chance to take the cup. As Holland had another convincing victory against Italy and beat Romania with a largely substitute team, sky seemed the limit.

Will they win? Will we finally do it? Will this be the team, the combination, that we will speak about for generations to come?

It was not to be.

Russia played a great match and simply did better than Holland. No luck, no referee mistakes, they were simply the better team of the match. Holland created some hope in the second half by scoring an equalising goal, but this hope soon faded as Russia’s team clearly had more energy left in overtime. It’s the end of Marco van Basten as coach of the Dutch team, the last time goalie van der Sar played for the team (one of the greatest Dutch football players ever, in my eyes), and it must be bitter for Boulahrouz who is mourning the death of his child that was born prematurely last Wednesday.

This means there’s only one thing left to do.

Root for Turkey!

June 22, 2008
Checkmate.

Some of you might know I have quite a bad SoapBoxxer addiction. Well, I was just having a discussion and it offered me a good opportunity to flex my wit muscles / muscles of wit, whichever you prefer. The conversation went as below.

Topic: Holland WILL win it all (Eurocup)

Patofeo2: they won’t
Spartz (that’s me): I doubt it, but odds have gone up considerably.
Patofeo2: I have a feeling czech rep. will win all
Spartz: Get real.
Patofeo2: What’s the wager?
Spartz: five!
Patofeo2: please write the team you think will win. That way I can talk shit to you when they loose 😉
Spartz:Czech Republic
Patofeo2: u bastard!

Checkmate. 😉

.
UPDATE

Looks like i can relate this post to Turkey after all. Turkey just eliminated the Czech Republic from the Eurocup in the most spectacular fashion!

Turkey last night made history in the most dramatic fashion imaginable by overcoming a two-goal deficit to emerge triumphant in their winner-takes-all Group A showdown with the Czech Republic.

Jan Koller and Jaroslav Plasil had put the Czechs on course for a quarter-final meeting with Croatia, but Turkey discarded the script in an unforgettable final 15 minutes with three goals, including two from Nihat Kahveci, to progress to the second stage of a European Championships for only the second time.

Telegraph

Fucking awesome! Since I’m going to Turkey this September, I’m rooting for both Holland and Turkey! It’s great to see ‘my teams’ book succes

Picture: Telegraph

June 15, 2008

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