The thousands of soccer fans who went to Ali Sami Yen to watch the match, and those who watched it at street side cafés with LİG TV as well as the couch potatoes who did so at home must have been very disappointed by a "mother of all derbies" that failed to live up to all the pre-match hullabaloo, hype and expectation.
On the pitch there was pretty much everything else except soccer and the match ended exactly the way it started, 0-0, producing four red cards in the last minute when the soccer field literally turned into a martial arts arena.
All in all scoring chances were scarce throughout the game because both teams resorted to catenaccio, or negative football, since the paramount aim of the players was not to score but to prevent their opponents from scoring.
Boxing arena
Toward the end of the match, tension flared beyond control and there were all sorts of provocations from both sides -- hair pulling, throat grabbing, headbutting, pushing, grabbing, slapping and combination punching. In a nutshell, a free-for-all erupted.
Galatasaray fans in the stands jumped on the fistfight bandwagon by ripping up stadium seats and throwing them here, there and everywhere. A fan even jumped over the fence and ran onto the pitch, but was immediately overpowered by security officers before he could do any harm.
And referee Fırat Aydınus must take his fair share of the blame for the fracas because it was his job to make the right calls and bookings for glaring infringements. But he didn't.
He made too many wrong calls throughout the match. This maligned man ought to have shown Fenerbahçe midfielder Selçuk Şahin a second yellow and then a red after his acrobatic high kick, like that of a professional kick boxer, landed on the head of Galatasaray striker Ümit Karan.
Galatasaray's Sabri Sarıoğlu viciously grabbing Fener's Emre Belözoğlu by the neck was evil, to say the least, and the punishment should have been a direct red card. Red? Sabri wasn't even booked.
But the most noticeable infringement ref Aydınus failed to see was in injury time, when Fener defender Diego Lugano headbutted Galatasaray's Emre Aşık in the occiput, or the back of the head, and Emre fell flat on his back. This vicious act warranted a red, but Lugano was not even booked -- resulting in Emre and his Galatasaray teammates taking the law into their own hands.
The referee red-carded Emre and Arda Turan of Galatasaray, and Fener's Lugano and Semih Şentürk after the punch-up. But it was too little, too late because all the damage had already been done. Little wonder he blew the final whistle after that.
The draw and the fight did none of the teams any good as the league title has now turned into a two-horse race between Sivasspor and Beşiktaş. Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe, the teams with the most wins in the league, with 17 titles each, may not only miss out on this season's championship, but also on second place and are therefore very likely to not play in the big time Champions League next season.
Everyone blaming each other
Everyone is blaming everyone else for the fistfight. Galatasaray coach Bülent Korkmaz held Lugano responsible. "The TV replays are crystal clear. It was Lugano who started it all," he said.
"We were provoked," Fener coach Luis Aragones said. "But that was no justifiable reason to lose our temper."
Arda claimed Semih punched him in the back while Semih said he was only trying to pacify him.
"Fener goalkeeper Volkan Demirel is telling lies," Galatasaray midfielder Ayhan Akman retorted, adding, "We did not swear at him or anybody."
"So all this show of friendship off the pitch is merely fallacious," Fener winger Uğur Boral lamented.
Lugano accepts blame for fracas
Fenerbahçe Uruguay defender Diego Lugano has accepted blame for the free-for-all that erupted during their derby with Galatasaray.
"No. 21 Emre Aşık stepped on my foot not once, but three times before the free-kick was taken and then I headbutted him," he said. "It wasn't hard, and Emre just feigned injury," he added.
But from what we saw many times on TV replays, the headbutt right on Emre's occiput was harder and more vicious than that of Zinedine Zidane on Marco Materazzi's chest during the 2006 World Cup final in Germany. And it was hard enough to cause a concussion or brain injury.
Zidane quit professional soccer immediately after that incident. Let's see what Lugano is going to do.
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