70% shares of İzmir club Göztepe were sold to London-based sports investment company Sports Republic. At the signing ceremony, Göztepe’s current owner Mehmet Sepil, Sports Republic co-founder and chairman of the board Henrik Kraft and other co-founder and CEO Rasmus Ankersen took part. 30 percent of the club and its amateur branches will remain under the management of Sepil. The new owners emphasized the potential of Turkey, İzmir and Göztepe. While the sale price has not been announced yet, with this purchase, the era of foreign owners officially started in Turkish football.
SPORTS REPUBLIC AND ANKERSEN
Sports Republic has a third founder who was not present at the ceremony. The company’s chief investor, Dragan Šolak, is one of Serbia’s telecommunications and media giants. Also a technology investor, Danish-American Kraft is an expert in football analysis software. The football mind at the center of the organization is Danish Ankersen, who has achieved serious success in clubs such as FC Midtjylland and Brentford FC in the past.
Ankersen’s trademark, whose football career ended due to injury, is talent identification, analysis and development. Thanks to the book “The Gold Mine Effect” he wrote on the subject, he met Matthew Benham, an Oxford graduate professional bookmaker and owner of Brentford, who was in the third cluster at that time. They decided to put Ankersen’s theories into practice. Thereupon, they worked together at both Brentford and FC Midtyjlland, the second club Benham bought. The results are stunning: FC Midtjylland have won three Danish titles in the last eight seasons. Brentford were promoted to the English Premier League for the first time in their history last season.
Ankersen, 38, will become Göztepe’s new president. 39-year-old Croatian Ivan Mance, who previously served as head scout and sporting director at HNK Rijeka, has been appointed sporting director.
The team’s methodology is based on performance measurement and smart transfers based on advanced data analysis rather than money injection. According to the criteria that the human eye misses but the numbers cannot miss, they apply a model in which they take the players they find valuable at an affordable price and adapt them to a system suitable for the country and the team. Again, it is aimed to strengthen the infrastructure with performance-enhancing applications based on the same criteria.
OWNERS AS BIRD OF LUCKY
Ownership scheme in football has existed in many countries, especially Italy, for decades. But owners, traditionally made up of local wealthy families and companies, began to change identities at the turn of the century. In particular, the Chelsea move of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2003 ushered in the era of “sportswashing” (money or reputation laundering through sports) in world football. The trend, which started with wealthy individuals, extended over time to states such as the Gulf countries. Football has sometimes indeed become the object of laundering, sometimes of a spoiled rich man’s quest for toys, and often of both at the same time.
On the other hand, “sportswashing” was based on the premise that football could not be a profitable investment. However, with the money in the game reaching incredible levels, it was seen that the opposite could also be true. Today, there are “corporate” companies that only invest in sports and buy clubs in different countries. Sports Republic, the new owner of Göztepe, is one of them.
It is customary to see foreign owners as birds of luck. They are usually expected to bring three things: money, mind and personnel. The answer to questions such as what proportion of the three of them will come, whether they will come and how much they will respond to where they came from, depends on the dynamics of both the buyer, the country of destination and the club from which they are purchased.
Sports Republic’s and Ankersen’s scorecards so far show that they are focused on gradual progress, not on scattering money. So they can contribute. Moreover, it seems reasonable to receive support from a mind that comes from a country like Denmark, which has almost always achieved “outstanding” successes in football and has good practice. In short, the shopping made may be right for Göztepe. But for country football in general, I’m not so sure.
MONEY MISSING?
The state of football in Turkey is not the case. For the first time in 27 years, there is no Turkish team in the Champions League. There are chronic problems such as wasteful transfers, primitive game plans that do not condescend to up-to-date information, politics and football becoming Gordian knots. As such, the feeling of “it can’t get any worse than this” prevails. But it can.
First, ownership stories in football, whether domestic or foreign, don’t always have a happy ending. You don’t know who came with what intention and you don’t have a say as a supporter. Would you prefer an ostentatious and successful reign to an out-and-out democracy with big problems? Let’s even say that the sultan turned out to be a great person and he helped you a lot for five years. But he died, naturally one of his successor sons. You can’t take back democracy. What will you do then?
What will we say tomorrow if a bored dynasty member of a Gulf country buys one of the big three, for example – the necessary procedures are prepared? What will happen if a club in the third league wins the Super League five times in a row just because an American investor grabbed it? Or would you like it if your century-old club is used as a guinea pig for the projects of the same company in stronger leagues?
It goes without saying that the football scene in Turkey is unfair, but marketing the last bits of organic rivalry could mean hammering the last nail in the coffin. That’s why you have to be careful. The conditions for entry, activity, but most importantly, exit of foreign capital must be clearly determined by law. In an environment where money speaks, culture becomes even more important. It should not be forgotten that you, as a fan and community, existed before the owners, and that life will continue after them, and that you have an identity that cannot be bought with money. Otherwise, you may be blown away when the investors leave.
Second, because of us. Those who come may be well-planned, magnificent, bookish, flawless, competent, but the environment they come in is not like that. For example, Göztepe is a club that was founded in 1925 and fought hard in Europe in the 1960s. But today’s Göztepe is that Göztepe, it’s a bit of a mess. Relegated to the amateur league for the first time in its history in 2007, the club merged with Aliağaspor, which was competing in the third league in those days, and continued its journey through a new club with the old logo and name. Identical or similar examples are common. In other words, it is necessary to be prepared for side roads, good-hearted relationships, income uncertainty and rules that will change every day while coming here. It is not easy to stop and make cold-blooded plans when there is a constant storm around, and to put them into effect even if you do.
There is another fundamental problem. It is obvious that there are not enough people with the necessary technical and administrative qualifications in Turkish football. However, although their numbers are low, we know that there are managers who will manage the clubs better and coaches who will play the teams better. But in order to be preferred, they have to crawl up the hills where their colleagues who have played ball in big teams, are on good terms with presidents or politicians, and have created a power area for themselves in the media. Even if they succeed, there is no guarantee that they will be selected.
The arrival of foreign capital may bring unexpected success to a few clubs. However, the reason for the current state of Turkish football is neither lack of money nor lack of intelligence. In a world where you have access to everything, you can close any technical and administrative qualification gap. The only condition is to remove bad faith and incompetence. Otherwise, even if the investors come from outer space, they will start to look like you within a few months and they will take away the pieces of identity you have left. No one can save you unless you make a sincere effort to save yourself…