It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Gaziantep have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Marked 8.40. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Gaziantep.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Words at Gaziantep training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christopher Lungoyi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Gaziantep have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Gaziantep training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christopher Lungoyi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Gaziantep told Deian Sorescu something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Besiktas defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gaziantep lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Denis Drăguş 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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Mohamed Bayo’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Gaziantep.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Mohamed Bayo 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.
Three points for Gaziantep, 1‑0 the final word against Kasimpasa in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Gaziantep training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christopher Lungoyi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 17 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
Batuhan Şen 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.
Taha Balcı 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Batuhan Şen has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Luis Pérez 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 oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
In brief
The terracesEverybody has an opinion about Zafer Görgen
Two goals and a mark of 8.01 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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 7.52 for the rest of it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 goals in one match, Yusuf Kabadayı on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Gaziantep and Antalyaspor.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gaziantep this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Gaziantep training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Christopher Lungoyi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.