Galatasaray-Trabzonspor: The Title Race Is Heating

The biggest favourite of the title Galatasaray won comfortably at home. The away team Trabzonspor played ineffectively. Since the beginning of the match, GS’s players were dominant on the pitch. In the first minutes, they tried to press high up the pitch. The first goal came from Feghouli in the 6th minute, and the home team started impressively. Because of TS’s defensive mistake, Gomis scored his team’s 2nd goal. In the last minutes, Kucka scored a fantastic goal, but TS were short of breath. At the end of the match, the scoreboard was showing 2-1 and GS’s victory.

The other favourite of the title Medipol Basaksehir defeated Akhisarspor. Thus, competition between GS and Basaksehir makes fans excited. I won’t digress. On this piece, I will focus on the match played between GS and TS.

Especially in the first half, there were huge spaces between TS’s defence and midfield lines. Those spaces were used effectively by the home team. Feghouli playing in the half-space gave TS defence a hard time. Because of spaces between lines, after pressing to Feghouli, big spaces were created for Mariano, the right back of GS.

When TS possessed the ball, they were not good at building-up the game. They played in a very narrow area, and they didn’t play fast. When this is the case, it wasn’t difficult to defend for GS. It is seen easily that TS weren’t good at having attacking positions.

The title race is going on. GS didn’t have difficulty in the match. Their expected goal rate was 1.73 while TS’s expected goal rate was 0.73. It reflects how ineffectively TS played.

After the game, in the press conference GS manager Fatih Terim talked about their fixture. People consider that they have difficult matches in the league. Next week, they will play against Genclerbirligi, and then Medipol Basaksehir. Maybe that derby will show which team is closer to the title. Terim said, “if we play like how we played today, I don’t think that we have a difficult fixture.” As is seen that how they played made him happy.

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The first four teams (Galatasaray, Basaksehir, Besiktas, Fenerbahce) of the league are trying to focus on the title race. Their fans are passionate. However, just FB’s fans focus on not only the title, but also the chairman election in June. The fans are divided into two parts. Turkey is waiting for this election. I will write a piece about it soon.