Guus Hiddink bites the dust

Now and then I publish guest blog posts on my site, written by Turkish journalists. This guest blog post is written by Engin Baş. Engin worked in Athens for several Turkish media and as a journalist for several online versions of papers, like Radikal, Hürriyet and Sabah. Now he is a freelance journalist. He is especially interested in soccer – not only the game, but also the politics.

This blog post is written by Engin Baş (see boxed text).

Another Dutch bites the dust. Guus Hiddink this time. Its not the first time he’s sent away from Turkey after ‘failure’: in 1990, when he was shining star as a trainer of Fenerbahçe, the club had the worst season ever. Fenerbahçe made a ‘deal of the year’ with him, a huge transfer for Europe at that time. But it lasted so shortly.

Maybe this was his challange coming to Turkey back again to break a leg. It’s seems Turkey is the only place he hasn’t shown his ‘magic’. Even though € 8 million a year can be considered a good motivation. But he didn’t reach his goal: this week, in the final match against Croatia, Turkey couldn’t qualify for the European Championship next year.

Again Hiddink separates the roads with Turkey and no one is sad about it. Because everybody agreed this time its his turn to leave because he didn’t succeed. All autorities of Turkish football media one more time enlightened that a non-Turkish coach shouldn’t be the head of the national team, because they don’t understant Turkish football mentality (if such a thing exists!) and players. ‘Turkish National Team’s coach has to be a Turk because players are emotional and maxed out their potensial when they have been motivated by Turkish coach emotionally’, the Turkish football media says.

Surely Hiddink has plenty of mistakes. His coming to Turkey from Russia was a big mess. He wanted to go to World Cup as Ivory Coast coach, but when they didnt agree in terms of salary he came early to Turkey. He lived with the ‘overgreedy guy’ mark on his face.

When he took the job, everybody thought that he would spend his time in Turkey, which he didnt. Actually he didn’t care. He left that duty to his assistents such as Oğuz Çetin who has no achievement as a coach in Turkey. It was a very expensive distant relationship for both sides. And it ended as it should be.

Turkish sport pages headlines warmly welcome the new Turkish coach, Abdullah Avcı. The atmosphere is that Turkey got rid of a real problem. Is it so? Was Hiddink responsible of lack of infostructure and youth system? Was he the main reason of new coming German youth Turks choosing to play for the German National team instead of the Turkish team? Was he the key man of the ‘Match fixing’ scandal in Turkey? Or was he the main reason Turkish Federation can not rule the Football and referees suck?

At least he has a consolation: getting sacked from Turkey is very normal and expected. But is there any consolation for Turkey?