Learning fight songs for losers: Our first Turkish football match

We expected nothing less than pandemonium at a Turkish football game, expectations bolstered by YouTube clips of maniacal fans burning down large swaths of stadium. But given that recent GS matches we’d seen on TV were played before thousands of empty seats -- the Lions are in the middle of the worst season in their history -- we came to fear less the arson-prone mobs and more that we would be the only guests to come to the party.

On game day, we joined the processional of fans from Mecidiyeköy to the new stadium in Seyrantepe to watch the boys in red and yellow duke it out with visiting side Kardemir Karabükspor. At security, cops searched us, seeking out contraband: knives, explosives and loose change. Then we split up to go to our seats. We had four tickets, two in the nosebleeds and two in the VIPs, but only three people.

The ‘cheap seats’

High up in the peasant section, I (Rachel) sat with my friend among fans shouting a variety of chants along the lines of “Adnan Polat istifa,” begging chairman Polat and coach Gheorghe Hagi to resign for crimes committed against the team and football, beating the club into the dirt with poor management. I don’t support GS but, being offended by crimes against the beautiful game, I joined in the fun.

GS fans changed their tune in the second half, cheering for the team rather than Polat’s resignation. Some fans unfurled an Australian flag when Harry Kewell, a team favorite, entered the pitch. However, the second half passed as uneventfully as the first, no goals, no red cards, no fights, no amusing antics from Sabri Sarıoğlu, a midfielder known for his speed and incomprehensible moves.

I was hoping for a goal or at least some excitement, but I shouldn’t have gone to a GS match for that. The teams, tied in league points before the game and after, each gained one point for a total of 33, making the game feel a bit meaningless. No one came out on top, neither in the match, nor in the standings. As for sitting far enough away that I couldn’t even see who was playing, well, the fans were more exciting anyway.

Front and center

Down in the VIP section, Adeline sat alone. From up above she stood out like a mascot -- Our Lady of Galatasaray in her red trench coat, with the long yellow sleeves of her shirt spilling out. In any other football season she would have been just more flotsam in the sea of fans.

Since professional athletes of major American sports are giants of mythical proportions, (association) footballers by comparison seemed like ordinary mortals. Yet up close, there was nothing ordinary about these players’ bodies, nor the vantage point; being footsteps away from the pitch pushes one into sensory overload, what with the sight of chiseled thighs and forearms, the sound of chest bumping ball, the smell of grass-dirt laced sweat, amid floods of fluorescent light and the soundtrack of disgruntled fans singing their Hagi hate songs. Even the biting cold, enough to give one a minor case of frostbite, didn’t detract from the thrill of being so close to “the action.”

But in a goalless match, the only action was midfielders Kewell and Pablo Piño warming up, stretching their legs and doing sprints, like human airplanes taking off from the runway, destined for nowhere. For Adeline, who tended to prefer “form” to content, this was just fine.

Last time we watched a match on TV at our local haunt, a guy said to his friend: “If girls are watching football, what are we supposed to do? Take up knitting?”

True, a difference between the US and Turkey with respect to sports is that here football was for boys, a fact exemplified by the conspicuous absence of interminable lines to use the ladies’ room at Saturday’s game.

But our trip to the Türk Telekom Arena proved that football is not about machismo -- nor, for that matter, about winning or losing, as the draw attests -- but rather the communion of strangers with a shared beef and the pull of belonging to a cause, however pointless.