Hi everyone, I am a Turkish guy who loves to watch soccer and in this post I just wanted to talk about yesterday's match: Fenerbahce vs. Benfica. Fenerbahce wanted to qualify for Champions League after very stressful 10(ten) years without hearing the magnificent Champions League Anthmen but they couldn't make it... I am not a Fenerbahce fan but as a Turkish guy I was very upset because of that elimination.

HOW IT ALL STARTED?

For me the collapse of Fenerbahce's "beautiful football" begins with the Alexsandro de Souza's departure at 2012. "Alex" was the commander of Fenerbahce, he was the classical trequartista that creates everything in the forward, scores many goals, makes assists for his teammates, in summary he was carrying his team. Alex left Fenerbahce because of a silly problem with his president Aziz Yildirim and his coach Aykut Kocaman. It was basically an ego war that made everyone unhappy and left Fenerbahce uncreative.

Just imagine Barcelona without Messi; many critics say that Barcelona is an average team without Messi. That's the point, Fenerbahce became an average team without Alex. Turkish fans are always hungry for goals, especially supporters of the three giants including Fenerbahce, Galatasaray and Besiktas are always want their team to score as many as possible, they desire domination on the field, they don't want scores like 1-0 or 2-1, they always want scores like 5-0, 6-0.

Alex was able to satisfy the needs and necessities of Fenerbahce fans totally. For those who doesn't know Alex well, let's see his Fenerbahce career stats:

333 matches, 310 contributions... That is just magical. There is nothing to say.

TEAM COHESION

Of course, in modern football, nationalities or cultures are not important as before but culture is culture. In Fenerbahce squad there is no cohesion at all. For years, Fenerbahce is trying to create the needed chemistry to win some trophies, dominate the league or participating in Champions League constantly. In old Fenerbahce, there were some Brazilian players who were playing alongside with domestic players and creating a Brazilian-Turkish cohesion towards glory. There were players like Roberto Carlos, Marco Aurelio, Andre Santos, Deivid de Souza, Wederson, Edu Dracena, Fabio Luciano, Marcio Nobre, Cristian Baroni and all of them was succesful because of cohesion. After Alex and Brazilian era, Fenerbahce signed many players from many different nationalities which left the team without chemistry.

Today's Fenerbahce squad has 11 different nationalities in itself. For me this is very silly number if you are creating a squad. Because Turkish football has its own characteristics for example Italian league is defensive, Dutch league is offensive etc. You have to create duo-culture like Brazilian-Turkish or French-Turkish whatever. But you cannot turn the team into United Nations conference.

TRANSFER POLICY

Late signings like Andre Ayew and Islam Slimani couldn't be able to contribute the team in these matches and Slimani is going to earn 4.2 million euros for one year. This is ridicilous. Fenerbahce doesn't have strong financial status or Arabic/Chinese owners who will pump money into transfers. Fernandao was Fenerbahce striker and Fenerbahce sold him to loan Slimani. There is no difference between Fernandao and Slimani even Fernandao is better for me because he knows the Turkish League very well. The only positive thing about Fenerbahce this season is the youth policy. They bought some wonderkids like Baris Alici, Berke Ozer, Ferdi Kadioglu and they started to play Eljif Elmas who were out of the squad last season.

TACTICAL FAILURE

In first leg, Fenerbahce coach Cocu, wanted to play something like 4-6-0 but he failed. Fenerbahce was not able to hold the ball in the forward because there was no striker. Alper Potuk played as False Nine but he is just an average classical right winger who can only dribble and cross. No physical advantage or no mental attribute to play as False Nine.

In second leg, Cocu made Ayew to play False Nine, but Ayew was a new arrival and there were no connection between his teammates. Alper Potuk was the best player for Fenerbahce in that match thanks to his work rate and determination. Nothing special. He just gave his best but that was not enough because his teammates were just walking around. Skrtel was decent in the back, Mehmet Topal was decent too and young winger Baris Alici came from the bench and showed his potential with a shot on target. He is just promising. There was also solid performance by Eljif Elmas but he needs some experience to play at this level. Rest of the team was awful especially Guiliano, Isla, Volkan Demirel and Valbuena. They were horrible. Isla can't shoot, can't cross, can't pass, can't mark; I don't know why and how Isla plays football. He was just the most terrible right back performance I have ever seen.

SOLUTION

Foreign players with high wages can't satisfy supporters. The solution is to start playing with wonderkids. In the squad there are some gems like Serhat Kot, Yigithan Guveli, Eljif Elmas, Berke Ozer, Baris Alici and some decent domestic players who will organise team cohesion like Sener Ozbayrakli, Mehmet Ekici, Ozan Tufan(needs heavy mental support before playing again), Salih Ucan(needs heavy physical training before playing)

My line up will be like this for Fenerbahce this season, and I will be happy to hear your opinions too.