goooooaaaalll!

i had been wanting to go to a Turkish football match ever since I first visited Turkey, and I finally got to go to one last weekend. there are three big Istanbul-based soccer teams in Turkey: Galatasaray, Fenerbache, and Besiktas. most people are Fenerbache fans, but my friends are huge Galatasaray fans...I'm not really into sports at all, so aside from goals and coaching tactics, i asked them what makes them GS fans. they told me because this team has "heart". woohoo i'm sold!

i think Samet and Kutlu were equally as excited as I was to take me to a match. they even got me a GS scarf to wear and were excited when they saw my red, yellow and black (team colors) outfit. they tried to teach me some chants (in Turkish), but i only really learned one because it had a lot of la-la-la-ing in it. more about these chants later. oh and another reason that they were so excited is because GS has a Japanese football player, Junchi Inamoto. i'm not Japanese, but there's the Asian connection, which is pretty rare in Turkey (more about this in a later post).

so we get to the stadium and it is absolute pandemonium. imagine about 8,000 Turkish dudes wearing yellow and red milling around. the crowd is about 95% dudes. of course, everyone thinks i'm Japanese and an Inamoto fan. airport-like security everywhere but we finally make it to our little plastic bolted in seats. oh they don't sell hot dogs here, or beer, or any alcohol. or nachos. only sunflower seeds and water in plastic cups. but no matter, these people have no time for eating or drinking because before the game begins, the chanting starts.

and doesn't stop until after the game finishes. 90 minutes, 50 different chants (though according to kutlu, only about 10 are in heavy rotation at the moment). you've got your cimbom bom chant (the affectionately call GS "cimbom" (pronounced "jim-bom", it doesn't mean anything), the goal chant, the f**k all the other teams chant, the destek (support) chant, the pump it up chant, the players chant, the go around the stadium chant, and can't forget the Inamoto chant. and they have chant leaders who have their backs turned to the game the entire time and lead the crowd in chants. it's really quite amazing.

no one can talk after the game, but it doesn't matter. we won 1-0.