Celtic And Others Should Be Watching Events In Turkey With Interest And Concern.

Last Monday, at the end of a league game in Turkey, an official’s decision to award a late penalty kick sparked one of the most incredible scenes ever seen in a football ground.

The club on the end of the decision, Ankaragucu, had been in the lead. Rizespor, their opponents, scored the spot kick and snatched a 1-1 draw. And so the Ankaragucu president ran onto the pitch and punched the ref. When he was on the ground, others rained kicks at him.

The outcry was incredible. Football in Turkey was suspended as the sport, and the nation, tried to come to terms with what had happened. Government slammed it as completely unacceptable.

The shockwaves of it were still reverberating when the games at the weekend kicked off. In spite of a week of soul-searching, another incredible event took place.

During this weekend’s game between Istanbulspor and Trabzonspor, the officials gave a penalty kick to the away side, and the Istanbulspor president marched onto the pitch and over the pleas of some of his own players he ordered his team off the field and brought the match to an end. This has shaken the sport in Turkey to its foundations. They have a big problem.

Last week, in the aftermath of the Ankaragucu incident, but before this weekend, a Turkish sports journalist, writing for The Guardian, attempted to put these matters into some kind of perspective.

He blames the creation of a toxic culture against officials which has spread from sports writers to the stands to the top levels of clubs themselves, where many believe that their own clubs are victimised and others protected from on high. This, he says, is a cautionary tale for other leagues, but the writer clearly accepts that part of the problem is the lack of transparency about decision making and the introduction and implementation of VAR causing mayhem.

Here is a small segment of that article, so that you might grasp the scope of the trouble the game in Turkey is in. These are officials from their three biggest clubs.

“In October, Fenerbahce’s president, Ali Koc, said: “There have been very strange [refereeing] decisions over the last seven weeks; in almost every game there have been decisions that have affected the score.” He then named four referees as needing investigating for their poor officiating.

“The former Besiktas president Ahmet Nur Cebi said last month: “The referees have changed how they target us – they are running their operations against us through VAR.”

“Galatasaray released a “refereeing report” in April claiming: “The referees who make mistakes in games not involving us get punished, referees who make mistakes in games for Galatasaray get rewarded.”

The echoes of that can be heard around Scottish football, from boardrooms to fan forums. We know those conversations are taking place; on occasion the frustration creeps into the public domain. We’ve had managers make comments. We’ve had clubs release statements. Trust in officials is at its lowest point in years.

The only difference is that those incendiary comments are not yet being fully articulated by the people who run clubs here. But if certain trends continue, you can see circumstances where that could happen, and the threat of official sanctions won’t stop them.

The point about how VAR has been weaponised has been made on this blog, in the Warren Buffet analogy about a cop following a driver until he finds something to cite him for. Alan Morrison’s brilliant appearance on the Graham Spiers podcast made the point about how refs who “make mistakes” against Ibrox are punished. We all know that there are specific referees about whom serious doubts exist, and who shouldn’t be near certain games with certain clubs.

I cannot recommend enough the Graham Spiers podcast on which Alan Morrison and Brian Gilmour dissected this issue and Alan presented his data which demonstrated the clear pattern over the last two years. It is stunning. It cannot be denied, only ignored and that’s what some are determined to do in relation to it.

They would doubtless claim that events in Turkey show us the dark path our game could go down if “conspiracy theories” gain wide circulation, but in fact it’s clear that what’s happened in Turkey is that too many issues have been boiling away under the surface of the game for too long and that at some point recently it just exploded. Perhaps with the introduction of VAR or perhaps something else. But this didn’t come out of nowhere.

The writer of The Guardian piece claims that much of this is down to clubs looking to find scapegoats for their own failures.

At Fenerbahçe, the first club quoted, they haven’t won a title in a decade but their statement isn’t about some dark conspiracy against them; it’s about how poor officiating as a whole is across the league. They are alleging corruption, but not specifically directed against them, so the claim doesn’t stand up in their case.

Galatasaray are the current holders. They’ve won three titles in the last six. Besiktas last won theirs in 2021. You might read their comments as paranoia.

But perhaps not. We don’t follow events over there and have no frame of reference for what’s actually going on. The two club chairman who have been in the news this last two weeks aren’t at major clubs at all, and their explosions have clearly been simmering for a long time.

Here’s a little more from The Guardian piece.

“Meler is on Uefa’s elite list and has officiated at the highest level. Turkish referees have officiated Champions League finals and in the knockout stages of the World Cup and European Championship.”

So have officials from Scotland. And we know our officials are rank rotten.

“Referees have made mistakes and the lack of transparency in explaining controversial decisions and refusing to apologise for errors adds fuel to the fire.”

That’s Scotland to a T.

“At this stage trying to silence dissent against referees will only make things worse because trust in officiating has been completely eroded. VAR controversies have inflamed negative sentiment. And this rebellion against refereeing is growing, not just in Turkish football but in other national leagues.”

And we can ignore that here or we can do something about it.

Officiating in Scotland has problems specific to this country, but it’s not as if there aren’t solutions available. A “national refereeing service” which functions as a business and trains and hires out refs but has nothing to do with the SFA would be a critical part of such a system.

Let me tell you what the real problem here is, and I’ll write about it later on. The culture at the SFA is fundamentally suspect. It’s that culture which has fostered suspicion amongst Celtic fans, that and the history their organisation has against our club.

A lot of the distrust flows from how we feel about the culture at Hampden, and they’ve done everything wrong in regards to this. It’s their fault if we’re heading towards a Turkish style situation; they refuse to change, they refuse to reform, they get a buzz off the power of having this issue in their hands and they won’t willing let go of it.

Turkey is a warning alright, but it’s a warning against doing nothing when there are clear problems and clear concerns already and which are only growing.