Metin: Now I know what ‘honorable second place’ is

The match-fixing scandal that has eclipsed Turkish football since last summer taught Metin, also known as the “Blond Storm” because of the astonishing performance on the pitch and his blond hair, how valuable a runner-up position can be even though you always play to win.

“In those days [when he played football], we couldn’t fully understand what an ‘honorable second place’ meant. I am glad for it, otherwise one could not have lived with the burden of such a championship [that was won through rigging],” he said in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman.

While noting that he has never encountered an incident of match fixing or attempts to manipulate a game during his 15-year-long career as a professional footballer, Metin said the one thing that could only remotely be reminiscent of match fixing were the requests of football players from relegation-bound teams. “We had talks with players of the relegation-bound teams. They would tell us, ‘Don’t do it [score goals], we will be relegated.’ We tried hard to not be affected by this because such talk may get you down,” he explained. There must have been attempts to manipulate games during the time he played, between 1982 and 1997, Metin said. “I am sure there were attempts to manipulate games in those days,” he said.

Unlike the Turkish football’s governing body, which deems match fixing and attempts to rig games as the same thing and imposes the same penalty for both offenses, Metin thinks they are two different things. According to the former football star, even though there are attempts, it doesn’t mean that they will work out as planned. “In my mind, match fixing and attempting to rig a game are two different things. Once you take to the pitch, you don’t remember such a thing [attempts to manipulate games]. You want to win. Otherwise you can’t get the taste [of playing],” he said.

The match-fixing scandal has been sweeping Turkish football like a whirlwind ever since July 3 of last year, when an investigation got under way. Numerous teams, including Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş, are implicated in the crisis as the title that Fenerbahçe won last season is tainted by allegations that the İstanbul club rigged the season’s final match against Sivasspor. Turkish football was dragged even deeper into chaos when the Turkish Football Federation’s (TFF) president and its two vice presidents resigned last week. Metin wishes that the new managing board, which will be elected on Feb. 27, will deliver its verdicts over the clubs implicated in the match-fixing scandal. “I hope they [the future TFF board] will make fair decisions which will satisfy the public,” he said.

He noted that even though time is being wasted at the moment, it will only be for a limited period of time. “Turkish football can win, eventually. I think match-fixing will be out of the question in future decades. If a crime is committed, it should be punished. I believe Turkish football will emerge stronger as a result of this process,” he said, adding, “I think UEFA [Union of European Football Associations] is not certain about what to do about this issue either. This confuses the TFF, too. Even the clubs couldn’t reach a consensus [regarding the match-fixing scandal and the penalties to be handed to the implicated clubs].”

Metin regrets not having focused on football more

Admitting that he made mistakes during his professional football career, Metin now regrets not having made better use of his talent. “I couldn’t do justice to my talent. I could have improved my shot and some other techniques. I couldn’t entirely focus on football; school distracted me,” he said.

Metin said he realized too late that he had what he called “the best job on earth.” “I learned how to play the game well, but I was a little late. That’s my biggest regret in life. I was late to learn how to play football,” he added.

A graduate of İstanbul University’s department of economics, Metin is known as one of the more intelligent personalities in Turkish football and the Turkish media often refer to him as an “intellectual.” The football legend says he was not an intellectual but just a university student at the time.

Metin was acquired by football powerhouse Beşiktaş from Kocaelispor in 1982 at the age of 18, the year he also started his university education. Metin was not alone, as other Beşiktaş players were also completing their studies. The other two of the Metin-Ali-Feyyaz trio, Ali Gültekin and Feyyaz Uçar, were also university graduates.

In the 1980s, when he joined the Turkish national youth teams, he was determined to study and play football at the same time, succeeding in both. As he wore the jersey of the senior national team, starting in 1983, he was still studying at İstanbul University, something which is almost impossible to do under today’s circumstances because of the demanding nature of today’s game, Metin said.

“If you are a high-profile player on the national youth teams, you spend at least 100 days during an academic year at training camps. This disrupts your academic life. It is impossible to pass the university entrance exam in that case. Imagine starting to play football on a club’s youth team. You may not be a professional football player at the age of 20. In any other job you will achieve some upward mobility after 10 years, which in football is not always a given,” he said.