I actually wasn’t sure that the Istanbul based soccer club Fenerbache had beaten London’s Chelsea last night during their champions league match last night here in Istanbul. Fenerbache is the most expensive team in Turkish history this year with a total cost for it’s players of 100 million euros. That’s quite an impressive number. Besiktas and Galtasaray are finishing somewhere around 50 million euros. Chelsea on the other hand is the most expensive team in history, coming in at 456 million euros per year. As you can see these two teams are of a drastically different scale.
However, since signing Roberto Carlos over the summer (See: Roberto Carlos is Coming to Istanbul) Fenerbache has seemed unstoppable. They are currently in the quarter finals of the most prestigious tournament in Europe, which means they are in the tops 8 in Europe this year. They are on pace to win the Turkish league again this year (they are currently on top).
Well last night I looked at my window to this scene:
Keep in mind I live in a remote sparsely populated part of Istanbul. The majority of the noise is from that darn truck which is out almost everytime there is a big win by a Turkish team, but you can hear the horns of all the other motorists. They are all stopped just before a roundabout where the people get out of their cars and run around and scream. Sorry I didn’t get a video of that, but I will have another chance the next time Fenerbache or the national team accomplishes some great feat.
Of course worse things can happen than losing sleep. If you remember (See: Wine-ing and Crying) I got teargassed standing in a crowd of Besiktas supporters last year. That was not fun.
Anyway, Fenerbache has to tie or beat Chelsea when they play in London next week on the 8th of April. If they score at least two goals, they can also lose by only one and still move on because of the away goals rule, but the finer points of the Champions Leagues rules are not interesting. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best.
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