Fener Canaries face tough Turkish Cup test against Bursa Crocs

But the fact of the matter is that the Canaries “hoping to win big,” in a very real sense, over the rampaging Crocs, might just be hyperbolic. The reason is simple: The Canaries, who have won the Turkish league championships 17 times, are lightweights as far as the Turkish Cup is concerned.

They have only won the cup four times since the competition began in 1962-63 -- the last time being in the 1982-83 season, therefore becoming a laughing stock whenever or wherever the Ziraat Turkish Cup is mentioned. Can the Canaries end their cup jinx this season? “Yes we can,” saith German coach “Herr” Christoph Daum.

The Canaries trained really hard this week for today’s match. On Tuesday they practiced in a cordial atmosphere at their Can Bartu training facilities in İstanbul under the watchful eyes of Daum and celebrated the birthday of midfielder Selçuk Şahin who turned 29.

“Don’t get carried away by the commanding 5-1 victory [in the league on Sunday] over Sivasspor,” Daum reportedly told his players.

“We have tough games ahead of us, and the match against Bursaspor is one of them. We have to treat every match like a tournament final, take every game seriously and guard against complacency. The cup is one of our major goals and we have to make our fans happy this season by trying to win anything that is winnable [the league, cup and Europa League],” he added.

The Canaries were hard hit by suspensions and injuries in Sunday’s Sivas match -- Turkey attacking midfielder Emre Belözoğlu, Uruguay defender Diego Lugano and Brazilians Andre Clarindo Dos Santos and Cristian Oliveira Baroni were all suspended, while Spain striker Dani Gonzalez Güiza was sidelined due to injury.

These players all took part in this week’s training sessions and should be available for action today, with the exception of Güiza who has not fully recovered.

So all is set for this evening’s quarterfinal encounter at Saracoğlu Stadium in İstanbul, where the Canaries’ Turkish Cup ambitions will be seriously put to the test by the Bursaspor Green Crocs, who show little or no respect to soccer prodigies.

Crocs also hungry for cup glory

The Bursaspor Green Crocs, who have never won the Turkish league championship since its inception in 1957, are currently third in the ongoing Turkcell Super League competition. And no one in their right state of mind thinks the Bursans can break the 53-year jinx this season -- not even the most diehard Croc. But Ertuğrul Sağlam’s Bursaspor, without the slightest doubt, will be happy to take home the Turkish Cup silverware this season for the second time ever.

The first and last time the Crocs won the cup was in 1986, three years after the Fenerbahçe Yellow Canaries did so. Looking back in time, the Bursaspor Green Crocs accomplished this feat when almost half of the people living in Turkey were not even born and when the Berlin Wall was still standing.

It happened when junta leader Gen. Kenan Evren was the Turkish president and the late Motherland Party (then ANAP, later ANAVATAN) leader Turgut Özal the prime minister; when the late Ronald R. Reagan was the US president and Mikhail Gorbachev the president of the Soviet Union; when the late Saddam Hussein was the ruler of Iraq and current Bursaspor coach Sağlam was just a young man of only 17 years.

Time has passed and many things have changed, but the Crocs have still not been able to break the cup hoodoo. And that serves to explain why they are taking this season’s cup competition very seriously.

Coach Sağlam is confident that he and his Crocs will return from Kadıköy with a result that will give them an advantage in the home leg. “We will be playing several times against Fenerbahçe in the near future, so we are ready for this,” Sağlam told reporters on Tuesday.

“The 3-1 home victory in the league over Eskişehirspor [on Sunday] is a thing of the past, and we are now focusing all our attention on the Fener match in Kadıköy. And I wish to inform all of you that we will be going there with a berth in the semifinals in mind. We have no injured and suspended players,” he further noted.

Bursaspor press secretary Ferruh Nayman concurred. “Three of our next six matches will be against Fenerbahçe, two away and one at home,” he said. “For us, the opponent is not important because we play with the same zeal and enthusiasm anywhere and everywhere. To attain our goal, we have to come out of these six matches unscathed,” he stated.

Sağlam and his Green Crocs again will rely on teenage striker Sercan Yıldırım for a decisive step toward their first cup triumph in almost a quarter century. Sercan has lifted the Crocs out of tight spots many a time in the past, and the Bursaspor camp will be hoping he does so again at Kadıköy this evening.

The other Turkish Cup first-leg quarterfinal today will be between Super League strugglers Manisaspor and Denizlispor at the Manisa 19 Mayıs Stadium.

Match-ups at a glance

17:00 Manisaspor-Denizlispor

Referee: Fırat Aydınus

20:00 Fenerbahçe-Bursaspor

Referee: Hüseyin Göçek

Note: The matches will be aired live on TRT 1 today.