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Why English football could use a bit of Turkey's girl power
Oh, to have drunk in the ambience at Sukru Saracoglu Stadium on Tuesday night. Sadly, I would never have been invited, for the Turkish Football Association had taken the quite stunning step of filling every one of Fenerbahce’s 41,000 seats with women and children.
Girl power: More than 40,000 women flocked to watch the football at the Fenerbahce Photo: AP By Oliver Brown
8:00AM BST 22 Sep 2011
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If you closed your eyes — or so my sources on the Asian side of the Bosporus reliably tell me — it sounded as if you were at a Justin Bieber concert.
These Turkish amphitheatres are febrile at the best of times. I am still stalked by the recollection of one night at the Inonu in October 2007, when crazed Besitkas fans partied so hard at their cavernous bowl I feared my wooden seat might break. For Fenerbahce, alas, animation spilled over into acrimony earlier this summer, with the home club ordered to play two matches behind closed doors after their supporters invaded the pitch during a ‘friendly’ against Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk.
Sometimes, this is a non-negotiable sanction. Sicily’s Catania were, infamously, ordered to play for four months in the empty, neutral venue of Cesena in 2007 as punishment for the rioting that led to a policeman’s death at the derby with Palermo. But in all circumstances barring the most serious, the spectacle of deserted stands is to be averted. It was with this logic in mind that Turkey’s authorities alighted upon their inspired tweak to the rules, whereby only the men were banned.
At a stroke, the atmosphere was transformed. From the outset of a 1-1 draw with Maniaspor, the cacophony was of a strikingly different timbre, as players found themselves applauded upon their entrance rather than jeered.
Flowers, in return, were thrown by both teams into the adoring female throng. This most intimidating of arenas became, bizarrely, the scene for some kind of re-enactment of the Woodstock Festival.
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It proved a glorious awakening. “We have to thank the ladies for coming to support us,” said Fenerbahce’s Joseph Yobo, their loan star from Everton.
Yasemin Mercil, among the few women members of their executive board, went further, contending: “This really is a historic day. The women knew all the chants. The same anthems were sung.” Except, she resisted adding, with the profane flourishes the male of the species is so fond of adding.
At the risk of generalising, women help leaven the mood at any sporting congregation, tempering the usual triggers of violence: namely, foul language and pure, blind drunkenness. And what surer deterrent could there be to trouble than a child, or even — as was witnessed in Istanbul on Tuesday — a babe in arms? I will never forget seeing how abruptly some troglodyte in a Reading shirt shut up when he realised his filthy invective had reduced the young boy in front of him to tears.
The feminisation of football can only be a force for good (And yes, I am already anticipating the mail deriding me as a delicate flower, suggesting none too gently that I should write about lacrosse instead). Consider our own efforts in the Nineties to erase hooliganism, recasting traditionally male-dominated stadiums as places to which we could countenance taking the family. The ease with which we can enjoy the live match experience is attributable, to a greater extent than we may have realised, to the fact that women face no impediments to attending.
As such, the progressive action in Turkey extends far beyond gesture politics. This, after all, is a country that shares a border with Iran, where women are known to have been attacked by state police in Tehran for attempting to watch football. Mercifully, the move has also fed an appetite for a greater egalitarian spirit. “Turkish football needs this,” Goksel Gumusdag, deputy chairman of the TFA, said on Wednesday.
Consider how refreshing it would be if our own football mandarins were to emulate the Turkish example. The action need not be precipitated by any transgression; it could simply be designed as an illustration of how much the male fan has to answer for. Does anyone seriously believe, for instance, that an all-female crowd would indulge in despicable chants about people dying, as happened at Elland Road on Tuesday night?
While a minority of Manchester United disciples scraped the barrel with a banner glorifying the fatal stabbing of two Leeds fans 11 years ago — in Istanbul, with a certain grisly irony — the womenfolk of Fenerbahce were celebrating the game for its own sake. Truly, the distance between the two grounds was measured in more than miles. The lesson was salutary: that our national sport, fuelled for too long by testosterone tribalism, must make contact with its feminine side.
Oh, to have drunk in the ambience at Sukru Saracoglu Stadium on Tuesday night. Sadly, I would never have been invited, for the Turkish Football Association had taken the quite stunning step of filling every one of Fenerbahce’s 41,000 seats with women and children.
Girl power: More than 40,000 women flocked to watch the football at the Fenerbahce Photo: AP By Oliver Brown
8:00AM BST 22 Sep 2011
12 Comments
If you closed your eyes — or so my sources on the Asian side of the Bosporus reliably tell me — it sounded as if you were at a Justin Bieber concert.
These Turkish amphitheatres are febrile at the best of times. I am still stalked by the recollection of one night at the Inonu in October 2007, when crazed Besitkas fans partied so hard at their cavernous bowl I feared my wooden seat might break. For Fenerbahce, alas, animation spilled over into acrimony earlier this summer, with the home club ordered to play two matches behind closed doors after their supporters invaded the pitch during a ‘friendly’ against Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk.
Sometimes, this is a non-negotiable sanction. Sicily’s Catania were, infamously, ordered to play for four months in the empty, neutral venue of Cesena in 2007 as punishment for the rioting that led to a policeman’s death at the derby with Palermo. But in all circumstances barring the most serious, the spectacle of deserted stands is to be averted. It was with this logic in mind that Turkey’s authorities alighted upon their inspired tweak to the rules, whereby only the men were banned.
At a stroke, the atmosphere was transformed. From the outset of a 1-1 draw with Maniaspor, the cacophony was of a strikingly different timbre, as players found themselves applauded upon their entrance rather than jeered.
Flowers, in return, were thrown by both teams into the adoring female throng. This most intimidating of arenas became, bizarrely, the scene for some kind of re-enactment of the Woodstock Festival.
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It proved a glorious awakening. “We have to thank the ladies for coming to support us,” said Fenerbahce’s Joseph Yobo, their loan star from Everton.
Yasemin Mercil, among the few women members of their executive board, went further, contending: “This really is a historic day. The women knew all the chants. The same anthems were sung.” Except, she resisted adding, with the profane flourishes the male of the species is so fond of adding.
At the risk of generalising, women help leaven the mood at any sporting congregation, tempering the usual triggers of violence: namely, foul language and pure, blind drunkenness. And what surer deterrent could there be to trouble than a child, or even — as was witnessed in Istanbul on Tuesday — a babe in arms? I will never forget seeing how abruptly some troglodyte in a Reading shirt shut up when he realised his filthy invective had reduced the young boy in front of him to tears.
The feminisation of football can only be a force for good (And yes, I am already anticipating the mail deriding me as a delicate flower, suggesting none too gently that I should write about lacrosse instead). Consider our own efforts in the Nineties to erase hooliganism, recasting traditionally male-dominated stadiums as places to which we could countenance taking the family. The ease with which we can enjoy the live match experience is attributable, to a greater extent than we may have realised, to the fact that women face no impediments to attending.
As such, the progressive action in Turkey extends far beyond gesture politics. This, after all, is a country that shares a border with Iran, where women are known to have been attacked by state police in Tehran for attempting to watch football. Mercifully, the move has also fed an appetite for a greater egalitarian spirit. “Turkish football needs this,” Goksel Gumusdag, deputy chairman of the TFA, said on Wednesday.
Consider how refreshing it would be if our own football mandarins were to emulate the Turkish example. The action need not be precipitated by any transgression; it could simply be designed as an illustration of how much the male fan has to answer for. Does anyone seriously believe, for instance, that an all-female crowd would indulge in despicable chants about people dying, as happened at Elland Road on Tuesday night?
While a minority of Manchester United disciples scraped the barrel with a banner glorifying the fatal stabbing of two Leeds fans 11 years ago — in Istanbul, with a certain grisly irony — the womenfolk of Fenerbahce were celebrating the game for its own sake. Truly, the distance between the two grounds was measured in more than miles. The lesson was salutary: that our national sport, fuelled for too long by testosterone tribalism, must make contact with its feminine side.
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