title, what title?

It will be a tough game for me. On the one side the country I love without an aparrent reason ever since childhood. On the other my Wahlheimat for 5 years. In the end I will not be sad, but for sure I'll be thrilled if Messi gets the final trophy he's been after... PS: Here is a better version of Argentinian fans singing the same chant on Copacabana

Geçen Cumartesi bir aile büyüğünden şu kısa hikayeyi dinledim: Tanrı'ya şeytan ile insanı sormuşlar: İkisini de ben yarattım, Şeytan'dan değil İnsan'dan korkarım demiş. Şans eseri bir gün sonra yayınlanan Behzat Ç'nin yaratılanların en canisi, en vahşisi insanların ülkemizdeki vukuatlarından 80li yıllara denk gelenlerini konu etmişti. Kurtlar Vadisi, Yıldız Masalı, Kuzey Güney, Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne gibi "gerçekçi" ve "değerli" dizilerin yapımcıları alınmasın ama Türk televizyonlarında belki de sinemalarında görmeye alışmadığımız gerçeklikte işkence görüntülerinin arasında insan doğasının vahşet kadar ayrılmaz parçası olan evlat sevgisi üzerinden ilerledi hikaye. Aklıma U2 İstanbul konseri sonrası blog'a eklediğim ve U2'nun beni en çok etkileyen şarkısı geldi: Kaybolanların Anneleri. Kaybolanlarin Anneleri U2 Geceyarisi, Ogullarimizi, kizlarimizi kopardilar aldilar bizden. Hala kalp atislarini duyariz, Kalp atislarini... ...

... who replied my prayers yesterday... If you watch this without a tear in your eyes, you gotta reconsider your love for football...

Bob Dylan has this great radio show called Theme Time Radio Hour. Every week he chooses a theme,such as Coffee, Devil, Trains, and plays a wide collection of songs about the theme. Interested can download almost all the episodes from the following website ( link to the website ). I was listening to the Weather episode the other day. He played De Niro's famous "Someday a real rain will come and wash away this scum" sample from Taxi Driver. Apparently Dylan likes this movie. So I googled De Niro and Dylan, and here is what I found: Brad Elderman ( link to his website ) took this photo in 1976 in a New York City backstage, where Dylan called the young and new actor to meet him in person. Apparently he tried a lot to get it back. I am happy he didn't get his way. Then I came across a similar picture in the Galatasaray blog I follow Kalendar Libero( link to the blog ): When Queen met the God. This picture of Maradona with Queen is from Queen's epic 81 South Am...

... or A proposal for South American dominance in the next world cup: Yes, it still hurts. Those four goals, that involve perfectionism in attacking football on the German side, and complete failure of the defensive skills on the Argentinian side. And God's sad sad face. So I have a proposal for the next World Cup. We all seen how good the Uruguay defensive line was. Just think about adding the dream forward line of Argentina with a 2 good defensive midfielders together.  It would be a dream team from the Rio De La Plata. After all, Uruguay has its roots in the Liga Federal, which was a federalist state aspiring to control whole Viceroyality of Rio De Plata, which includes today's Argentina, after gaining independence from Spain... If this doesn't work, they should at least bring together a team of chefs from both countries and tour the world: Montevideo: Buenos Aires:  The meat quality in Germany is comparable with the quality of Chinese toys. So I cannot eve...

It feels like the day of a Besiktas - Fenerbahce game. Three more games and than we can celebrate the Kingdom of God with his holiness and his MESSIah. There has been much said about the tactics and managerial style (or the lack thereof) of El D10S. Much of of it has got to do with the fact that his style is unorthodox. I am not sure if these two fine articles ( link to The Guardian article , link to the Süddeutsche Zeitung article ) I read today are plain contrarian or have some substance to them. Both articles underline the unorthodox human-management style of D10S, and speculate that it might be the right way to treat high class players who have already achieved a lot in their careers. Unlike European trainers, and wanna-be European trainers like Dunga, D10S gives a lot of personal freedom to the players. Carlos Tevez is allowed to stay in a single room, since he likes to walk around naked in his room. D10S replies "Free running chickens are the happiest." Both articles...

And do watch the goal of the century in original Argentinan commentary ( link to video ). I almost cried.

I have such a low opinion of mankind these days. The tribalism surrounding all matters of international and local politics, our ability to fool ourselves into self-importance, our lethargic response to matters of environment, and above all, how easy it is, for people of similar intelligence and manners to draw completely opposite conclusions about a matter that is so obvious makes me tired and pessimistic about the mankind. World Cup is therefore a very welcome break from all of this never ending and repeating history of human stupidity. In case you haven't noticed yet, I support the most stylish team in the tournament. Which  happens to be managed by the God himself.

You may well be good without God, but not when it comes to football. That's why I shall be praying to the Football God tonite, before tomorrow's game.

Luciana Aymar, the Maradona of womans' field hockey. Hope Argentina wins gold. Yelena Isinbayeva. The only queen of pole vault. Her world record in the Olympics is her 24th! I think Phelps is everyone's hero. Earlier, I had asked what the factors behind the swimming records are. Thanks for Yigit for this article , which links the records to the professionalization of the sports(the swimmers can swim longer and mature), the equipment, the deeper pool which allows more under water times, and advanced pools that minimize turbulence. There is also this interesting article from Scientific American , which links Phelps' success not to his "freak of nature" body, but his ability to sense the water and coordinate his strokes accordingly. Usain Bolt's unbeliveable performance in the 100 meters final gave me the same thrills, when I watched Floyd Landis came from behind in a mountain stage to take the lead. I hope he is really dope free.

D10S Existe!

The greatest football player of all time Maradona was honored by the Serbian director Emir Kusturica's Cannes 2008 movie. The news conference after the movie showed once more why Diego is still not only the greatest player of all time, but also the coolest player of all time in football. Here is a summary of what he said: About Julia Roberts: "Julia Roberts. I would do anything to see her come along the Croisette. I would cut off my hand for that – even the hand with which I scored against England." About Pele: "I promised my daughters that I wouldn't talk about Pele, but well, I can't prevent myself — I regret it for him," Maradona said. "If I hadn't done all the bad things that I've done in my life, Pele would never have been able to come along as No. 2 behind me, because he used to go to bed at 10 o'clock at night, whereas I was still out on the tiles until 5 o'clock in the morning. That's the big difference between us."...

This Sunday Boca Juniors will be playing their arch rivals River Plate. They are lagging the leaders River Plate by 4 points and will have to win. I'll be in Turkey this weekend, and will catch this great game on TV. Last Sunday there was a similar derby between Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, which Galatasaray won -and took the leadership with 2 weeks to go in the season. One of the big shots in the club administration had a version of Sos Cagon chant of the River Plate fans prepared for Galatasaray, which I have to admit was a good one. Too sad the Galatasaray fans could not sing it during the match. Here is the original one from River fans, which is amazing: But my heart beats for Boca and their fans: I will watch a Superclassico before I die. That is a must. On the home front Besiktas is having a relatively shitty end to the season, stuck at the 4. place, with no hope of a direct UEFA Cup place. All of this after having the championship within our reach 3 weeks ago. To make the m...

I'm a city soul. I lived in big cities all my life, and hated my only camping adventure -though it might have had to do with the 2 drunk guys snoring in my tent. Still I feel the urge to leave it all behind go to somewhere secluded. Its not that I am having a bad time, I am lovin' it to live in a city. It's just that the idea of being alone, and feeling the utter beauty of nature, and act as if all of it were made for me is very very tempting. Just like Lou Reed, the poet of the post-modern metropolitan male, says in his song Modern Dance: So maybe I should go to Tanganyika where the rivers run, down mountains tall and steep or go to India to study chants and lose romance to a mantra's dance So if I had the chance to go right now, these would have been my choices: 1- Patagonia, Argentina 2- Shetland Islands, Scotland 3- Rural Iceland 4- Kamcahtka, Russia

My interest for non-traditional variants of football started when I found an illustrated book in our elementary school library on the 1990 championship season of New York Giants, when they beat Buffallo Bills 19-20 in the super Bowl. Then bing the obsessive type that I am, I tried to follow other forms whenever I got a chance. The toughest being the Australian Rules Football , most fun to watch being the Gaelic Football , the fastest and one needing most tactical skills being the American Football, Rugby has always appeared to me the one requiring most strength, courage, and stamina. Despite its extreme contact sport nature, it also the most "gentleman" sport of all. The amount of respect the players show to the referee makes traditional football -soccer- look like a nursery school birthday party. The referee talks only to the captains of the team, and other players, if they bitch about referee's decisions can be expelled from the game. Like Gaelic Football Rugby has s...

Boca Juniors won their 17th international title yesterday after beating Gremio 2-0 in Porto Allegre, Brazil. The star of the game was surely Riquelme, who scored 2 goals. Not so surprisingly Martin Palermo missed a penalty... I could only find the video from the first leg. This title makes Boca the team with the most international trophies ahead of Milan with 17 and 16 titles . And here is a picture of me celebrating Boca's victory last week:

My Argentinan club Boca Juniors won their Copa Libertadores Semi-Final return game 3-0 against Cucuta of Colombia. They had lost their first game 3-1 and with this result they reach the final to play a Brazilan team. With 2 games to go they are 4 points behind the leaders San Lorenzo in the Argentinian closure championships. Here are the goals from the game:

Much effort, and sometimes blood, has gone into efforts of proving the existence of God, without much success. But when it comes to God of Football, there is no doubt, who he is. This picture from 86 World Cup game against Belgium is one of many such proof of existence: This week I gave this picture to my sister to make a poster out of it for my living room, she came up with this great work: Then this morning OnurKa broke me the sad news that D10S was hospitalized after over-indulgence, which is merely an euphonism for eating a lot... I hope D10s recovers soon, or a new wave of atheism is to take a hold of the world...

Argentine football giants River Plate's , a.k.a Los Millionares, legendary stadium El Monumental , where 1978 World Cup Final took place, was shut down for five games after a crowd trouble between River Plate fans led to the injury of 5 supporters. This reminded me of a similar accident that took place in Fenerbahce Stadium on Valentines Day 2007, before a UEFA game against AZ Alkmaar. Allegedly started after a dispute over the distribution of free tickets to fan groups, something that Fenerbahce claimed to have stopped doing, 5 supporters were injured, one of them being serious as a result of a knife wound to the chest. The incident was simply overseen in the Turkish Media, who choose printing rather kitschy metaphors related to the Valentines Day (my friend Ozan's blog has a nice post about it). A year ago a Besiktas fan was stabbed to death in Besiktas Stadium. Besiktas' Stadium was closed for 4 games, and "The Stadium of Death" read the banners on the fi...

According to this International Herald Tribune article, Boca Juniors have loaned Juan Roman Riquelme from Villareal for the Argentinian Closure Championship. After failing to clinch the title on 3 of the last games of the Opening championship, and loosing in a championship game (despite taking the early lead in the game), Boca seems to be doing everything necessary not to repeat the mistakes of the last season. Riquelme will hopefully fill the hole left by Fernando Gago, who left for Real Madrid.