Taha Altıkardeş and the problem with Bursaspor by @GelisimLigleri
What Should Have Been / What Has Been
What is the main way to succeed in the World of football? Money? Power? Luck? If we are honest, you should have all of those to succeed. But the most important thing is to have a good and producing Academy, that can provide both transfer fees and players for the starting XI.
As you may know, football isn’t like any other sport. It has a much different dynamic because it’s the most global sport. For this reason, you can’t just buy your way into success. You need to build it up, by yourself.
With that in mind, we would expect to see that the clubs with a great Academy to win multiple titles and dominate local competitions, right? If we look at the examples like Ajax, Barcelona, Celtic we can see that it works exactly as we discussed. So naturally, an Academy that produced Zeki Çelik, Ozan Tufan, Enes Ünal, and Altay Bayındır would lead to a successful and rich club, right? Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. And it seems like there is no turning back…
Description
Taha Altıkardeş is a Turkish center-back, born on 22th of August 2003. He is playing for the Bursaspor and Turkey U19 national team -which is successful despite the lack of success in the senior team.- He first started playing last year, after a big covid wave hit both Turkey and Bursaspor which left out the Turkish side to play with their U19 players. And he’s been wonderful ever since.
Style of play
Taha is not a typical center-back as you may think. He used to play both right-back and at the midfield which makes his ball technique is on a different level. He is also really great at passing. His long balls, which can be seen on these clips, can easily lead to goals or hard-to-stop attacks. And with his height and jumping ability, he wins a lot of ariel duels against tall strikers, which the Turkish 2nd division consists a lot of. He is not bulky enough, which causes him to lose a bit more ground duels than he should have. (Ground duels won 0.7 (40%)) Non the less, he is one of a kind player. And with a correct environment, he can evolve into a superstar.
A Transfer, Perhaps?
Like all the Turkish football clubs, Bursaspor is massively in debt. And the failed transfers of this season made it even worse. Özcan Bizati, the 3rd manager for Bursaspor is about to be sacked (or he may be even sacked while you are reading this.) The only objective for his season (to get promoted to the first division) seems to be a hopeless dream right now.
With all of these, Bursaspor and the city are like a burning hell. If a player makes one simple mistake, there are thousands of people ready to “trash” him on social media. And this causes a lot of players to be angry with the badly run club, which leads them to leave the club for free like Ali Akman and İsmail Çokçalış.
For Taha, who is been benched twice this season, the future is complicated, for obvious reasons. And with the new manager on his way, we don’t quite know if Taha even will be given enough playing time. So this leaves an open door for a possible transfer, to give him both a better environment and a better chance at fulfilling his potential. But, Bursaspor usually doesn’t let their players go that easily, even if they don’t play him. With the contract extension he signed, Taha is possibly locked up in Bursa for 5 more years. And if we don’t see an improvement in Bursaspor in both management and the team, which is very unlikely, Turkish center-back may fail, and be stuck in the Turkish lower divisions for the rest of his career.
What Should Happen / What Will Happen
Some people believe heavily in fate. I don’t. I would rather believe in logic. But sometimes, logic doesn’t quite work. The randomness of life comes along and messes everything up. Usually, we want logic to win the fight against this, but for Taha, I hope that his luck helps him to have a good career, and proves me wrong…