Trabzonspor have gone to Galatasaray with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Fabrício has, at Trabzonspor, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Goztepe have kept their man, and Trabzonspor go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Cihan Çanak and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Nobody at Trabzonspor will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Emmanuel Martínez was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Nobody at Trabzonspor will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
7 goals in 31 games at Esenler Erokspor — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Trabzonspor updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Trabzonspor that is a harder question to answer.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.89 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Esenler Erokspor left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Boardroom16 Apr 2029
Nobody left the Trabzonspor dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout16 Apr 2029
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Erdem Ozan to a room that had heard them before.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Denis Drăguş will call it something else in private.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mohamed Salah is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Chibuike Nwaiwu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
17 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trabzonspor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Sidny Lopes Cabral is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Chibuike Nwaiwu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
14 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
The phone has started ringing about Alper Guler again, and this time the name on the line is Serikspor. Trabzonspor are listening politely and promising nothing.
A brace, and Paul Onuachu takes the afternoon — 8.85
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Paul Onuachu provided it, and the 8.85 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Trabzonspor can pretend not to have heard.
Trabzonspor and Antalyaspor have settled on $270.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Trabzonspor they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Erol Çolak has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Fatih Karagumruk are out and Trabzonspor go through, 2‑0 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Player ratings25 Dec 2028
A brace, and Paulo Vitor takes the afternoon — 8.32
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Paulo Vitor provided it, and the 8.32 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.97 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
11 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Paul Onuachu. 1‑0 against Boluspor, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings25 Dec 2028
Kazeem Olaigbe was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.26. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Position 4, 38 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
Emmanuel Martínez was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The fixture the rest of the division is looking forward to more than either of the sides in it. Both know a win changes the season and a defeat does not end it, which is what makes it hard to play.
Nobody at Trabzonspor will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Alper Guler and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad20 Nov 2028
The division's best last weekend was a Trabzonspor man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Mohamed Salah was the best thing in any of them.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Trabzonspor know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Galatasaray next, and one man in the Trabzonspor dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
4 goals in 11 games at Esenler Erokspor — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Trabzonspor updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Trabzonspor lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.61 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.95 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mohamed Salah is on it.
Alper Guler and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑0, Erdem Ozan could afford to be generous.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Trabzonspor know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Trabzonspor can pretend not to have heard.
The offer went to Galatasaray this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Add another name to the list: Keciorengucu have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Alper Guler. The answer from Trabzonspor has not changed — yet.
Nobody at Trabzonspor will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Signed today, seen by nobody for years, and one of them may one day be the reason the club exists. That is the whole of the argument for an academy, and it is a good one.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Serdar Saatçı had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Trabzonspor, and it is not being withdrawn.
Rizespor paid $840.0K and Trabzonspor took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Galatasaray have kept their man, and Trabzonspor go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. Trabzonspor had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Trabzonspor is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Onuralp Çevikkan is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Trabzonspor heard it as anything else.
15 appearances and 3 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.
Something was said to Muhammed Cham and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
23 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Trabzonspor lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Position 4 on 63 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
Two goals and a mark of 8.62 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Trabzonspor they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Paul Onuachu. 2‑0 against Rizespor, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Trabzonspor told Jankat Yılmaz something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Trabzonspor they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Trabzonspor heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trabzonspor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Erdem Ozan after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mohamed Salah is on it.
6 goals in one match, Mohamed Salah on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Trabzonspor and Alanyaspor.
Trabzonspor asked and Genclerbirligi said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
He is 17 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Paul Onuachu’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Trabzonspor.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
Denis Drăguş was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.14. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Trabzonspor can pretend not to have heard.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.43 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
$870.0K on the table at Galatasaray. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The name of Cenk Özkacar has come up in conversations Trabzonspor were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
The first defeat in 4 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Galatasaray; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Oğuzhan Yılmaz did not need any: 7.65, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.99 for the rest of it.
He is 17 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 53 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I watch every Trabzonspor game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Gaziantep runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
18 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 68 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Trabzonspor hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Trabzonspor, and 0 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Trabzonspor will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Batista Mendy signs something — a contract at Trabzonspor or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Position 4 on 71 points, and the places that carry a European ticket are close enough to count. Seasons like this are decided by two results in April, and the club knows which two.