Did Tanju win the Golden Boot while Feyyaz was playing in sandals?
There was a time when the stands used to roar: “Milli Takım Kartal’sız olmaz Özarı” – “You can’t have a national team without a Kartal, Özarı.” A whole chant written as a rebuke to Coşkun Özarı, the national team coach in the 80s, because he stubbornly avoided calling up Beşiktaş players. Think about the irony: in a country where a full Beşiktaş squad once represented Turkey almost entirely in 1952, we somehow ended up in an era where black-and-white shirts were treated like a problem, not a foundation.
Look at the big contradiction. Metin-Ali-Feyyaz were tearing stadiums apart every weekend, rewriting domestic football, yet they never truly stood side by side in the national team. You can, if you insist on being generous, say, “Well, the coaches leaned toward Rıdvan-Aykut-Tanju.” Fine, make that excuse for the forwards. But how do you possibly explain Ulvi Güveneroğlu? A defender who played for Beşiktaş for about 15 years, survived countless coaching changes, almost never got dropped by his club managers… and not a single full cap for the national team. Not one. There is no football logic that justifies that.
Then somebody comes out with a scale in his head: Feyyaz has 33 caps, Tanju 31 – see, everything’s fair. Clever guy, right? As if that’s how you measure it. Start by looking at minutes played. You’ll find nearly a thousand minutes of difference between them. And in those 33 matches for Feyyaz, five are youth internationals anyway. Tanju, meanwhile, almost always starts. Feyyaz is counted as “capped” in games where he comes on in the 89th minute and barely breaks a sweat. “Did he play for the national team?” Technically yes. “Does that mean he was trusted and given a real role?” That’s the illusion.
And then comes the lazy narrative: “But Tanju got the Golden Boot, he was a European-level striker.” Sure, Tanju won the Golden Boot – and what, Feyyaz was running around in worn-out leather sandals? The man scored close to 200 goals. We all remember those matches where Yusuf literally held the ball on the goal line waiting for Tanju to arrive and tap it in. Personal stats are not born in a vacuum; sometimes they’re dressed up by the system and by teammates who are told whom to serve.
Look at Ali. He scores 103 goals in a single season for Beşiktaş’s legendary attack, and people still manage to twist the story into “he couldn’t even make it into the hundred-goal club.” In that particular season, Ali had 33 league goals without a single penalty. No spot-kicks to pad the numbers. Try putting that on the scales when you compare strikers. The issue isn’t talent; the issue is which talents the system chooses to spotlight and which it quietly shoves to the margins.
And then there is Sergen. Tell me, how many talents like Sergen have we actually had? Pure raw gem, unlimited potential, a football brain ahead of his time. Yet, for all that, his story in the national setup is fragmented, inconsistent. Go check how many minutes he actually played for the national team compared to his ability and form during his peaks. The ratio will shock you. Not because he wasn’t good enough, but because decisions were shaped by politics, grudges, and preconceived labels.
Same with Şifo. When you put his talent and productivity on one side of the scale and his international usage on the other, the imbalance is staggering. You end up asking yourself if the coaches were watching the same league as the rest of the country. Players like him should have been central parts of the national project for a decade. Instead, they were often treated as optional extras.
And then we come to Recep. People casually insult him, make snide comments, and then hide behind the excuse that “even you guys called him takoz.” As if a terrace nickname is a serious scouting report. Those who talk like this don’t know football. Anyone who actually watched him week in, week out knows that we spent years trying to find a right-back as reliable and physically dominant as Recep. Show me a clearly better right-back from that era. Hard task, isn’t it?
It’s the same old story: heavy judgments passed down through time, never questioned, never healed. One generation grows up hearing “this one is overrated, that one is limited, this club’s players choke in big games,” and those clichés eventually turn into selection criteria. Bias becomes tradition. Wounds don’t close; they get inherited.
This is exactly why the Orkun debate has struck such a nerve. When people ask, “Why isn’t Orkun playing?” and the answer is framed as a comparison with İsmail Yüksek, it already shows the problem. You’re turning it into a false binary. The real question is something like: “If Hakan Çalhanoğlu is just returning from injury, why not consider Orkun more seriously in that creative role?” That’s a tactical discussion. Instead, the question is twisted and cheapened, and whoever raises it is accused of some kind of hidden agenda.
In the past, it was the same. When fans cried out about unfair treatment of certain players, the response was often built on distorted numbers, incomplete information, or selective memories. “Look, he has 30 caps, what more do you want?” they’d say, without mentioning that half those caps were short cameos in stoppage time or friendlies with nothing at stake. On paper, it looks like opportunity. On the pitch, it felt like tokenism.
Of course, none of this means the current coach is automatically wrong in every choice. As long as the team is winning, the manager has the scoreboard on his side. That’s football’s most brutal rule: the result is king. If we qualify for the World Cup, if this generation finally gets a ticket to the stage it deserves, nobody will be eager to reopen old wounds the next day. The arguments will be postponed, the debates muted by celebration.
But pushing these issues under the rug doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Turkey has a remarkable pool of talent – players who can decide games on their own, who can be the face of a new football era. The point of all this frustration isn’t to tear down the team or sabotage the coach. It’s to ask for fairness in how we evaluate and use our footballers, so that the same old biases don’t bury another generation of potential Ulvis, Feyyaz’ and Sergen’ in the shadows.
Talk honestly about selection, and you’ll end up talking about history. About how some clubs’ players are given the benefit of the doubt while others have to deliver perfection just to be considered equal. About how certain media narratives push one name forward and drag another backward. In that environment, a Golden Boot can become a shield that protects one striker from criticism, while another striker’s 200 goals are treated like a footnote.
If we really want to move forward, we have to change the way we judge national team value. Not just by counting caps, but by looking at how and when those caps were earned. Was the player trusted in decisive qualifiers, or thrown into dead rubbers? Were they part of a long-term plan, or used as convenient stopgaps? That’s where you see who was genuinely believed in, and who was merely checked off on a list.
Take the midfield, for example. Modern football demands versatility, intelligence, and the ability to adapt to different game states. Players like Orkun bring a different profile – not better or worse in absolute terms, but suited to particular types of matches, especially when you need someone who can break lines with passing and carry the ball under pressure. Ignoring that profile entirely is not just a tactical choice; it echoes that old habit of undervaluing what doesn’t fit the established template.
The same applies to defenders and full-backs. When you only reward the most visible, flashy contributions, you ignore the Receps of the world – the ones who quietly win duels, close spaces, and allow stars to shine. Then, a decade later, everyone wonders why the team struggles to defend transitions or why it can’t find stable full-backs. Because players like that weren’t glamorized, weren’t protected, and often weren’t appreciated when they were available.
All of this leads us back to tonight’s match. Everything now hangs in the balance of what plays out in ninety minutes and in the mind of Montella. If his vision unfolds the way he imagines, if he uses this group to its full potential, this team absolutely deserves to be at the World Cup. The world should see what kind of extraordinary skill set we have scattered across this squad.
Our criticisms, our anger, our sense of déjà vu – they’re not rooted in pessimism about the team, but in the fear that history might repeat itself, that talent might again be mishandled. Asking “Why isn’t Orkun playing?” is not a trick question. Turning it into a matter of cunning or regional loyalties is precisely the kind of evasive maneuver that has haunted our football for decades.
So let the team earn its ticket first. Let them book that World Cup place, because this generation has enough flair and heart to leave a mark on the biggest stage. Once that’s done, there will still be time to dissect what we’ve done right and what we keep getting wrong: how we measure greatness, how we distribute trust, whom we choose to put in the spotlight.
Until then, remember this: when you look at raw numbers and conclude, “Tanju has 31 caps, Feyyaz 33, see, all fair,” you’re missing the story between the lines. Tanju did not win the Golden Boot because Feyyaz was playing in rags. He won it in an ecosystem that favored him. Feyyaz scored his 200 without that protection. The real balance sheet of Turkish football is hidden in those details – in the minutes, in the roles, in the timing. That’s where you find the truth behind the caps.