Do you know how it feels to have the greatest team in the world? Or let’s change the question. How does it make you feel to watch the matches of a team that has dominated its own tournaments for four years? Do you tear up at the final matches where the champion’s heart is revealed in the ring, on the park, and on the green fields? If your answer to all questions is yes, yes and yes, congratulations, you have witnessed VakıfBank, Anadolu Efes, our athletes who beat everyone in the ring or the success of Etimesgut Municipality Ampute Sports Club.
In our geography, where marginalization is legitimized in all matters, and side-disposal conflicts do not end, sports fields have also taken their share from this phenomenon. Every department other than football is marginalized as “amateur branches”. The definition of the amateur branch is as follows: Those who do not make any income from their sports branch are called amateur athletes, and the sports they do are called amateur branches. The club presidents of the big three still describe activities such as basketball, volleyball and boxing as amateurs.
The commentators, who dominate the internet and chase headlines every time they speak, are jumping like a Moor who has found something for it. Commentators, unaware of the brand’s value, think that basketball branches and volleyball branches, which turn into a left-back money, are hurting, and they lean on their seats and say, “Amateur branches should be closed!” finds the courage to say it. He doesn’t know that the brand awareness of Fenerbahçe in the world, especially in Europe, is higher for the basketball team than the football team. He thinks that there is only football in the whole world. Why? Because he watches football…
Let’s remember once again the success of sports branches that are marginalized as amateur branches. Eczacıbaşı Dynavit became the champion in the women’s CEV Cup, VakıfBank beat Fenerbahçe Opet in the semi-finals and passed Imoco comfortably in the CEV Champions League final with 3-1 and became the champion in the men’s CEV Challenge Cup, which Halkbank unfortunately lost.
In basketball, Fenerbahce Safiport played its eighth Final-Four in the last 10 years in women’s and in men’s EuroLeague, Anadolu Efes won its second consecutive championship in the third consecutive EuroLeague final in men’s. Bahçeşehir College became the champion of FIBA Europe Cup, while Frutti Extra Bursaspor finished second in EuroCup.
Let’s look at the equivalents of these successful clubs in football, so that the picture will be clear who is managed amateurly and who is managed professionally. Fenerbahçe’s football team participated in the UEFA Champions League, Europe’s biggest cup, in the 2008-2009 season. Competing in the UEFA Europa League in the 2021-2022 season, the yellow-dark blue team finished third in their group and continued on their way from the third cup and were eliminated. As for Fenerbahçe basketball, my humble opinion is that due to the wrong coach choice at the beginning of the season, this season they could not make it to the playoffs in the EuroLeague. But you can understand the magnitude of the perception of the basketball team here. The fact that he didn’t make it to the last eight in the EuroLeague was newsworthy. But it is also useful to remember this. Fenerbahce Beko five years (2015–2016-2017-2018-2019) managed to play the Final-Four in a row. Is the basketball team professionally managed or the football team? Which is more “amateur”?
Fenerbahce Opet volleyball, if it were not for VakıfBank, we would probably have carried their CEV Champions League victory to our pages. We are glad that we were able to witness this competition live. If documentaries had developed in our country, we would definitely have watched the conflict between them years later in the cinema or on online series platforms. Let’s continue with Fenerbahçe. Women’s basketball team Fenerbahçe Safiport won the Herbalife Nutrition Women’s Basketball Super League and placed second in the FIBA Women’s EuroLeague.
Frutti Extra Bursaspor placed second in the EuroCup, the second biggest cup of European basketball, to make fairy tales jealous. Bursaspor football club, on the other hand, dropped to the third tier in our local league this season. Who is an amateur and who is a professional? Even if you are one of the teams with the lowest budget in the place where you compete, success comes when you entrust the job to the right and qualified people. But the championship, but the most important of all is to leave a mark in the organization you are fighting for.
Football in Turkey is over! There is no land to play on the streets and no children to play with. People wait in line for basketball or volleyball courts. Because the successes of VakıfBank and Anadolu Efes push young people to do these sports on the street. Are there any local football players that are symbolized and admired by children? I’m not answering! But a child can emulate Eda Erdem, Zehra Güneş, Shane Larkin and accept him as a role model. A little one’s enthusiasm for an athlete can also keep them away from the dangers of the haunted streets. Thousands of our little brothers live with the dream of becoming athletes in the volleyball school of Fenerbahçe, which you call the amateur branch. They may or may not struggle at a high level, but it is a fact that doing sports from a young age is the best investment in health for their skeleton, that is, for their advanced ages.
The statements of self-professed miracles in the media such as SAÇ (Serdar Ali Çelikler), ROK (Rasim Ozan Kütahyalı) reached absurd proportions. The perception created by these people seriously harms the sport. HAIR can come out and make statements such as “Fenerbahçe should close the amateur branches” or “Ergin Ataman cannot coach any team in the EuroLeague” without relying on any data. The late journalist Uğur Mumcu “Having an opinion without knowledge” There is no need to draw a picture of his word, it has a headshot on TVs or YouTube. ROK will not be comfortable without selling our clubs. Selling the clubs that are ours, once again “ours”, is the biggest betrayal to football clubs. Which owned club has been successful so far in the local league? Do you not see the state of Göztepe? For this reason, Uğur Mumcu has a very good saying: “Those who are on the side of the strong, not the right, become cowardly and slippery. They rotate as the center of power changes; they become pinwheels.”
