I once watched Fenerbahçe’s penalty shootout against Sevilla with an American friend.
As the tension mounted, I stood up and cheered for every Fenerbahçe goal.
My friend looked at me, puzzled. “Aren’t they your rivals?” he asked. I smiled and said, “Tonight they’re not Fenerbahçe – they’re just a Turkish team.”
That was the spirit.
When our clubs played in Europe, we dropped the tribalism. Their victories were our victories. We were a football nation.
Today, that spirit is dead.
Turkish football has spiraled from passionate rivalry into toxic factionalism. We no longer sit together at games.
We root against each other in Europe. We boo our own national team players if they wear the wrong domestic jersey. And now, after years of verbal abuse, slurs and finger-pointing – we’ve crossed the line into physical violence.
Jose Mourinho didn’t create this culture, but he is rapidly becoming its most dangerous symbol.
Let’s be clear: Mourinho called Galatasaray’s manager a monkey. A slur that should’ve resulted in immediate and severe consequences. Instead, it was shrugged off, treated as part of his “mind games.” But it wasn’t just gamesmanship – it was racist, dehumanizing, and utterly unacceptable.
Now, after Fenerbahçe’s second home loss to Galatasaray this season, Mourinho has gone even further – physically attacking the opposing manager. This isn’t a sideshow. This is a pattern. This is who he is.
Fenerbahçe, instead of asking hard questions about their decade-long title drought, has found comfort in outrage. The referees are to blame. The federation is to blame. The media is to blame. And now, it seems, even physical assault can be justified in the name of frustration.
Mourinho’s tactics – verbal provocation, victimhood narratives, emotional manipulation – are being embraced, not rejected. But this isn’t the path to success. It’s a fast track to moral and cultural bankruptcy.
What Turkish football needs right now is reflection, not retaliation. A return to the days when rivalries fueled growth, not collapse. When a Galatasaray fan could cheer for Fenerbahçe in Europe and mean it. When we believed, even just for one night, that they were just a Turkish team.
We can still get back there. But not by following Mourinho.
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