Fatih Yayla (the team I train with, but can’t play for due to licensing issues) played a friendly game with local nearby club, Koca Mustafa Pasa. But of course these two have a lot of differences too, such as Yayla not even having a rented ground for 2 hours a week and K.M. Pasa having a real sized ground (Namik Sevik) 24/7. Or Yayla struggling for a 3rd place in their group in youth league’s second division and K.M Pasa being the unbeaten team in their group out of 6 games.

The game kicked off with three new possible signings also trying out for Yayla, one of them starting as left striker. In which position he was terrible at. Yayla went on to get 5-1 behind in the 78th minute, in which time the coach decided to do a substitute: Me going in, Oguzcan coming out. after 3 minutes I did an assist for Alican and he scored, 5-2. After the goal the game went on to be without action up until the very last seconds. Ramazan passed to Alican and he shot, the goalkeeper calmly took it in his arms.

And just as it looked there was no way ANYONE can score from such a position before the game ends, I did: The goal keeper was going to shoot the ball out of their field and after that the referee was going to end the game. Just as he was throwing it on his foot to shoot it I put my leg in the way of his shot (without committing any foul) and managed to get it, then the empty goal was mine to pass to! 5-3. Got to say I loved that game.

Ardi’s team, well the team he manages and its players decided to pose for the camera.

After a pretty fun friendly game with a local rival team. They all seem to have had fun, except one. And even though Ardi repeatedly said “Inappropriate gestures won’t improve your chances”, Murat doesn’t give up. Not only he didn’t give up, he even taught others to continue his glory. If only he would do the same in actual football games…

Yeah, it IS interesting.

*From one of F.Yayla’s pre-season friendlies played in Balat

Today we visited Historia with Mustafa, the kids team’s tall and talented goalkeeper. Even though he wasn’t really impressed with the facilities as “they weren’t as good as Olivium” (another shopping mall, in a nearby area).

Originally we planned to go there earlier but ‘scheduling’ problems made us get there late and rain had already started. And that wasn’t the least of the problems as one of Ardi’s telephone card customers (he installs cheap VOIP phone systems) was also in Historia and he had a 30 minute talk with her. Thank god she was satisfied with the phone service, I wouldn’t wanna imagine her angry. While Ardi was stuck talking to her, me and Mustafa were doing fun stuff. In lines of fat jokes, customer jokes and blind date jokes. There was more but I forgot.

THAT was my 18th birthday cake. I did expect a big surprise, like a car as a gift or perhaps my very own home gym but this surprise was huge. Even Ardi doesn’t like pink. Surprisingly.

I got the worst of news for my football career and dreams today. Due to the fact that I’m a foreigner, I cannot play for the team that I’ve been training with for SO LONG. That’s pure nonesense cause they told me the only way I can play for this team is that I provide them with a document that says I have a one-year visa (for any purpose). The big big trouble being that the kind of visa I can get is either six or three months long. Meaning… well you know. End of this season for me right there.

Oh yeah! we’re in 2009 and so we continued the tradition of playing a serious football game in the first day of the year. Although we didn’t even agree upon who really won the game, I think we did. All others in our team think so, too. Either way it was all fun. Ironically the only picture we took was this one, of this guy eating his only snack of the day.

Not a hobo, just one of our players.