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Champs are made, not born: Crocs too good for Sivasspor
The victory also means the Crocs are the only team with a 100 percent record in the three games played so far after Shota Arveladze’s Kayseripor drew 2-2 with Ankaragücü in the capital on Friday night. And the interesting thing is that not only has Bursaspor won all three of its matches, it is also the only team that has not conceded a single goal.
The statistics: played three, won three, drew none, lost none, five goals for, none against and the nine maximum points.
After the Crocs lost 3-0 to the Trabzonspor Black Sea Storm in the pre-season Turkish Super Cup, young Bursaspor coach Ertuğrul Sağlam had the following to say: “It’s a good thing that this [defeat] happened in pre-season, not during the season. We still have time to determine where our weaknesses lie.”
Sağlam, translated as “solid,” has kept his word. He identified and fixed Bursaspor’s flaws as the Crocs rebounded to beat newcomer Konyaspor 1-0 at home in week one. They followed up that victory by defeating the claw-less Galatasaray Lions 2-0 away in week two in İstanbul and on Saturday night shut out Sivasspor away by the same score.
The “Yiğidolar” (Brave Men), as Sivasspor is popularly known in football circles, matched the Crocs head to head and shoulder to shoulder -- until the 81st minute, when they ran out of steam.
A long cross by ex-Fener player Gökçek Wederson found an almost unmarked Volkan in the Sivas box and the young midfielder did not hesitate in redirecting the ball with a powerful shot into the back of the net for Bursa’s first goal. “It was a good feeling to score in Bursa,” said an ecstatic Volkan after the match.
Bursaspor’s second goal in the last second of injury time was comic, to say the least, because it was the Yiğidolar themselves who put the final nail in their own coffin.
How? Sivasspor was awarded a free kick in the 93rd and every Sivasspor player, including Stuttgart-born German goalkeeper Sead Ramovic, packed the Bursa penalty area in a desperate bid for an equalizer. The strategy backfired and the hunter became the hunted.
Bursaspor’s Bulgaria international keeper Dimitar Ivanov Ivankov saved the resultant free kick and immediately threw the ball to Ali Tandoğan in center circle -- and the defender kicked a long ball into a wide-open Sivasspor net. And that was the end of the story: Sivasspor 0, Bursaspor 2.
This was Sivasspor’s first defeat this season after beating whipping boy Galatasaray 2-1 at home and drawing 1-1 away with Antalyaspor in week two.
“We would have won if we had scored first,” Sivasspor coach Mesut Bakkal said at his post-match news conference. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Bakkal failed to realize that the game was over and everybody had gone home.
Also on Saturday, Bülent Uygun’s Bucaspor beat Genclerbirligi 3-1 at home and Abdullah Avcı’s İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyespor triumphed by the same score over Kasımpaşa in a mini İstanbul derby.
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