When the football season is in winter-break, there is basketball...




Besiktas ended the first half of the Turkish Super League in a relatively promising position, only 3 points off the leader. We have a slight fixture advantage -we play all our derbies home, though we are not very good at home derbies except against Galatasaray- and we are going to make some changes in the squad. For the first time in4 years I am looking forward to the second half. Sivasspor, an Anatolian club, has done what Lanus has done this year in Argentina, they finished the league in the leadership. Fenerbahce has built up momentum, but their Champions League occupation may slow them down. The early performers Galatasaray iare playing very bad football, and their 73 year old trainer Karl-Heinz Feldkamp was absent for the last two games and is currently in Germany. He might pull up the same trick he pulled on us and leave mid-season, which would exacerbate the troubles at Galatasaray.

In the meanwhile the Turkish Basketball League has been experiencing the toughest and most interesting competition Turkey has seen. 5 teams are real contenders to the crown. Galatasaray, who almost relegated 2 years ago is leading the pack followed by Telekom from my home city. We are third, followed by Fenerbahce-Ulker -the team formed by the old Turkish giants Ulker and Fenerbahce, and Efes Pilsen. If we can continue the pace we gathered -7 wins in a row- in the last part of the first half, championship does not look far away. Here is a video from our last game against Fenerbahce-Ulker from the weekend, which clearly demonstrated how motivated the team and the supporters really are:

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