Okan Buruk’s Galatasaray are a thrilling throwback

According to José Mourinho, nobody wants to watch Turkish football.

“It’s too grey, too dark, it smells bad,” bemoaned the current Fenerbahçe boss in a recent tirade. “Nobody abroad wants to watch the Turkish league.”

Well, on this, The Special One is incorrect, I’m afraid. Especially now, as the much maligned division actually approaches a comparative golden age. And especially across town, in Istanbul itself, where Galatasaray look stronger than they have for a decade.

Under the refreshing tutelage of former player Okan Buruk, Cimbom are currently top of the Süper Lig, hunting a third successive title. Domestically, they have yet to lose a competitive game this season, while continentally, a bold start has them sitting third in the revamped Europa League table.

There have been murmurs of a Galatasaray revival for years, of course, and occasional glimpses have been seen as the club continued to attract withered stars like Radamel Falcao, Arda Turan and Juan Mata. But a thumping 3-2 win over Tottenham this week before 51,739 at RAMS Park verified Buruk’s project as genuine. Galatasaray are back, and they mean business.

More pertinently, though, this current Cimbom iteration is incredibly entertaining to watch – and in a countercultural way that sparks delight and inspires encouragement. They are a thrilling throwback, eschewing the rote tippy-tappy zeitgeist to dominate games with direct, thrusting ingenuity. It is the type of football I love, the type of football you rarely see anymore, and people are beginning to take note.

In truth, the Tottenham game was not as close as the scoreline suggests. Galatasaray flew out of the blocks and grabbed an early lead courtesy of a sublime Yunus Akgün volley – itself an increasingly obsolete genre of goal, as risk-averse ideologues preach autotelic possession over individual flamboyance. To be fair, Spurs equalised against the run of play, only for the commanding Victor Osimhen to ransack the game with two goals in eight minutes.

Tottenham’s second goal proved rather meaningless, and the baseline data speaks to Gala’s dominance. Cimbom registered 28 attempts on goal; Spurs, four. The hosts had eight corners; Tottenham, none. And while the dismissal of Spurs youngster Will Lankshear skewed the statistics somewhat, Galatasaray were great value for their victory. The margin should have been greater, in fact.

Buruk’s boys played with an intensity, sharpness and agility that has often eluded Turkish teams – much to Mourinho’s overarching point. And in this age of analytics and post-Pep tiki-taka, where a homogenous style of play makes football a banal grind, it is pleasing to see a young coach go back to basics instead of reinventing the wheel.

Nowadays, too many teams view damage limitation as the optimal route to victory. Hence passing for passing’s sake. Hence teams anaesthetising possession. Hence goalkeepers and centre-backs rolling the ball to each other to run down the clock. Okan Buruk does not abide such dogmatic suppression of raw instinct, a genericising product of football’s Moneyball moment. Instead, he goes for the jugular, determined to outscore opponents in the true spirit of this meandering game.

Whereas most teams tinker with ‘false nines’ and ‘inverted wingers’ who default into pre-set defensive patterns, Buruk deploys two bonafide centre-forwards – Osimhen and Mauro Icardi – and trusts his team to feed them repeatedly in dangerous areas. Defensively, Galatasaray work hard to retrieve possession, then probe deep in the opposing half when they do so. Buruk is no long ball merchant, but he asks his offensive players to showcase their skills where they can cause the most damage. That may seem incredibly simplistic, but football is a simplistic game. Too many idealists overcomplicate it.

Against Spurs, for instance, Osimhen and Icardi both had more touches than Fernando Muslera, Gala’s stalwart ‘keeper. And while that may seem inconsequential, it is a rarity in modern football, as possession is hoarded in one’s own defensive third. Buruk has flipped that concept on its head, and his streamlined approach has transformed Galatasaray into a relentless offensive force. A return of 41 goals from 14 games, between the Süper Lig and Europa League, attests to that. Not for Okan your ponderous regurgitation.

Personally, I have followed Galatasaray from afar for many years, since a family holiday in Turkey amid the pomp of Didier Drogba, Wesley Sneijder, et al. Frustratingly, though, and perhaps undergirding Mourinho’s argument, options to watch Turkish football from the UK have always been few and far between. BT/TNT briefly carried a few Süper Lig games during the Covid-19 pandemic, and their comprehensive coverage of UEFA competitions provides an occasional Turkish outlet, but otherwise, watching Galatasaray typically involves dodgy streams of appalling quality. 

Incidentally, I vividly recall watching one Champions League game on BT back in 2019 – away to Club Brugge – that, by contrast, shows how far Galatasaray have come in a short space of time. On that night, coached by the legendary Fatih Terim, Galatasaray felt anachronistic – left behind, a plodding, rudderless mess, as football evolved beyond them.

When Cimbom finished bottom of that Champions League group with zero wins and a -13 goal difference, I considered it a new nadir in their rich history. And it was, in many ways, only for Buruk – and Dursun Özbek, elected club president on the same day in June 2022 – to resuscitate a sleeping giant.

Implored by Ozbek, Galatasaray have once again gone big-game hunting, true to their gargantuan mystique. A Galacticos-lite model netted Icardi and Osimhen, Dries Mertens and Hakim Ziyech, Davinson Sánchez and Kerem Demirbay. Unlike eras past, however, those players slotted into a coherent ethos laid down by Buruk, who plays to their strengths without necessarily appeasing the hipster commentariat.

The result is what we see today: a rekindled Galatasaray, playing an endearing style of football, eyeing sustainable glory. There’s a nostalgia to it all – a restorative belief in raw football impulse over clinical computation. Oh, and speaking of throwbacks, Buruk played for Galatasaray the last time they won a European trophy – the UEFA Cup, 24 years ago. A repeat of that triumph cannot be ruled out, and I will be watching every step of the way. Even if José Mourinho will not.