I went and played my first game of football for a team in Turkey, adding to several other nations around the world in which I have played properly organised games. A theme running throughout all of them is that I get warned about how brutal the game might be.
“Oh, I know you English guys are a bit polite, the game might be a bit…rough for you” usually accompanied by a wink and then some quip in the local language. I always come out unscathed as my foreign teammates underestimate quite how physical our game is in the UK.
In Istanbul however, the warnings were far more stark, with one friend actively pleading with me not to play at all. Turkish football fans have a pretty brutal reputation and so I approached this game with slightly more caution than usual.
I needn’t have worried. Within five minutes a guy was moaning because I kicked the ball at him too hard and it hit his stomach. The next minute I made a fairly innocuous shoulder challenge for the ball, “Foul!” was called out. I stopped and looked around, wondering who had made a foul, before the other players apologetically insisted it was me and that I needed to play less hard: “This is Turkey, yani.”
Indeed, Turks, despite being known to get quite lairy in sporting matters, are actually very soft on the physicality of the game itself. They are also extremely polite people, and this extends to their courtesy on the football field. Someone on the OTHER team actually shook my hand after I scored a goal.
