Capital Display Part 2

Saturday. What a great day it is especially in the US with Fox Soccer Channel showing English Premier, Bundesliga, Italian, Spanish and Argentinean Matches. Add that to IP World for the Super Lig and its footie heaven. All I did today was watch football, perfect. And in truth it has been a good day results wise.

First game of the day was Chelski and Birmingham. A 0-0 draw was a good result. Is it me or are Chelsea a very boring team to watch? Anyway this was a result that breathes a little bit of life into the Premiership especially as the second match of the day was Man Utd beating Bolton 2-1. This means Man Utd are only 7 points behind Chelski.

Then Liverpool beat West Brom and at the same time Besiktas beat Ankaragucu which leads me nicely to the main event of the day. Galatasaray and Genclerbirligi.

The game got off to a good start with a penalty for GS after only 7 minutes. Now I have to admit that I think Hakan was extremely fortunate to be awarded a penalty given he is not Brazilian. There seemed to be minimal contact and I think Sir Alex would have preferred this referee for the Bolton match as there was a very similar situation where Ben Haim actually made contact and pushed Ruud off the ball but the referee decided no penalty. Still GS were awarded this one and Necati scored. Then on 20 minutes handball in the penalty area gave Necati another chance which he readily accepted. After a brief bout of handbags at dawn involving Ayhan and half the Gencler team things seemed to get a bit spicy but GS rode the storm. After some Gencler pressure Sasa Ilic should have scored after a mistake by the Gencler keeper. Gencler had a couple of chances after a foul by Emre towards the end of the first half but the GS defence held firm.

So the second half started in much the same way as the first with an excellent Ilic goal in the first couple of minutes. The referee then carried on his habit of awarding dodgy penalties by awarding one to Gencler for one of the finest dives seen outside of the Olympic Pool. I mean lets forget the fact that the initial tackle was outside the area! Justice was served when the penalty was taken so badly and Mondragon made the save. There were a few chances for both sides after that, Hakan could have had another penalty, Mondragon made an excellent double save and then GS brought on a couple of youth team players by the looks of them!

All in all a fairly comfortable 3-0 victory which takes us back to the top of the Super Lig.

Even though GS had to make a few changes the players coming in Emre for Song and Ergun the team played well and are making light of the missing Saidou who I think has been the best player since the winter break.

So not a very good evening for Bulent on his return to Ali Sami Yen, now we need the team that cannot be named to lose or draw tomorrow away at Antep and the weekend will have been almost perfect.