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Lions ready to reignite their league championship bid
For perpetual title contender Galatasaray, with 17 league championships to its credit, finishing second in the league is tantamount to finishing last. In other words, anything short of winning the league title is considered a failure.
The Lions, under the tutelage of Dutch coach Frank Rijkaard, lost several matches they easily could have won in the season’s first half because of their extremely porous defense.
No defense
The Lions scored 36 goals in 17 matches in the first half of the season, the highest in the league, but conceded 21. And it is really hard to see a team with these stats winning the league championship.
With the likes of captain-playmaker Arda Turan, Aussie winger Harry Kewell, Democratic Republic of the Congo forward Shabani Christophe Nonda and young Turkey leftie Caner Erkin, the Lions had no shortage of quality attacking options even though star Czech striker Milan Baros suffered a broken foot during the “mother of all derbies” against Fenerbahçe in week 10 and has been sidelined ever since.
It was at the back that the Lions were most vulnerable. Turkey international defenders Servet Çetin and lanky Hakan Kadir Balta were off form. Injury-prone Gökhan Zan, acquired from Beşiktaş as a free agent, was always at the club’s infirmary rather than on the pitch.
And so the Galatasaray defense was all over the place and even became a laughing stock in topflight Turkish soccer. There was no coordination among the players at the back, and they were usually ensnared by their offside trap.
Neill, the savior?
Defense does really win championships, according to the old soccer adage, but Rijkaard has learned this truism only belatedly.
So he and the Lions are hoping that the signing of Aussie Lucas Neill from English Premier League side Everton will help them patch up the team’s porous defense and enable them to win matches they easily lost in the first half of the season.
Neill made 12 appearances with the Toffees this season, and it is not clear whether he will be fit to play against Antep today. But the fact that Rijkaard, himself a retired attacking midfielder, is giving preference to defense is enough to make the diehard Galatasaray fans happy.
The Aussie defender was the center of attention during Thursday’s training sessions, and everyone seemed happy with his performance.
Kewell seems to have fully recovered from his injury and is very likely to start today, but Nonda, winger Sabri Sarıoğlu and midfielder Aydın Yılmaz are doubtful.
“It’s always a good thing to start on a winning note,” said Rijkaard, whose team won all its cup matches during the winter break. “We do not have the luxury of underestimating any team, and so we are taking Gaziantepspor very seriously,” he added.
Antep is the underdog today, but the southeasters will be aiming to cause an upset by drawing or even beating the Lions this evening.
The Trabzon Black Sea Storm, without a league championship since 1984, trailed leader Fenerbahçe by 10 points at the halfway point and therefore is out of title contention as it hosts struggling Sivasspor at the Hüseyin Avni Aker Stadium today.
Having dropped so many points in the season’s first half and losing all its matches against the İstanbul “Big Three,” the fourth coming of Şenol Günes won’t be enough to turn the tide in favor of the Storm.
On Friday night leader Fenerbahçe beat visiting Denizlispor 3-1 in İstanbul to consolidate its lead in the 17-team league standings.
Live on LİG TV-HD
15:00 Trabzonspor-Sivasspor 19:00 Galatasaray-Gaziantepspor
Today’s fixtures and referees at a glance:
14:00 Kayserispor-Gençlerbirliği
(referee) Mustafa Kamil Abitoğlu
14:00 Ankaragücü-Diyarbakırspor
(referee) Serkan Çınar
15:00 Trabzonspor-Sivasspor
(referee) Tolga Özkalfa
19:00 Galatasaray-Gaziantepspor
Aytekin Durmaz
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