Stubbornly insisting on the wrong path is not just a flaw, it’s a destructive habit that eats away at a team from the inside.
Hyeon-gyu Oh is the clearest proof of this. Just like in the Fenerbahçe match, the Samsun game passed him by almost completely. The ball barely found its way to his feet. No structured attacking pattern to bring him into play, no meaningful assist attempts toward him, not even a decent cross onto his head. Yet, whenever he actually finds the ball in and around the box, he shows that he’s perfectly capable in front of goal. Despite this, the dominant narrative has become “He’s not Beşiktaş level as a centre-forward.” The bigger issue is that he isn’t even being used like a proper centre-forward in the first place. You can’t judge a striker you never feed.
Then there’s Cerny. To create room for Cengiz, he’s been shifted to the left at times, and on other days pulled into central areas almost like an “8”. His face says what words don’t: he’s visibly uncomfortable with his positioning. As a result, Beşiktaş has never managed to extract his true potential. Whether it’s the training methodology, chemistry with the coach, discomfort with his role on the pitch, or some private family matter, the outcome is the same: a talented player stuck in neutral.
Djalo is another case study. In my opinion, he has explosive acceleration, speed, excellent positional awareness, and real quality. On paper, exactly the kind of modern defender or defensive player you build around. Yet he’s rarely allowed to play two consecutive games. Either there’s a physical concern we’re not being told about, or it’s a coaching choice that defies football logic. Holding back a player who needs rhythm to shine is a self-inflicted wound.
Felix’s situation is even more paradoxical. He’s reportedly on the list of players who are supposed to be moved on, yet he consistently finds a place in matchday squads and often on the pitch. Imagine the mental chaos this creates: “I’m not wanted, but I’m needed.” This is a textbook example of the “fairness of selection” problem. He is living, week after week, the full weight of that injustice.
Jota Silva has been another victim of inconsistency. Our coach clearly has some unresolved issue with players whose surname is Silva, because Jota has never been allowed to develop a healthy rhythm of play. One match he appears, the next he disappears. Just like Istanbul’s fragmented, cloudy weather, his involvement has been irregular and patchy. Naturally, this erratic use makes him look ineffective.
And then there is Vasquez. He arrived in the winter transfer window, a signing that was supposed to send a message: “We are reinforcing, we are serious.” The clearest message we actually received was that no one seems to have any idea what he is. He hasn’t played a single second. Not one minute. No one can say whether he’s meat or chicken, as the saying goes. How can a professional club sign a player and not test him in at least one competitive match? Not even for one game? The question answers itself: something is fundamentally wrong in the decision-making chain.
Cengiz is a different type of story. Maybe he was brought in with high hopes. Maybe his arrival was driven more by personal connections and negotiations than by a clear technical plan. It’s also true that he has been given minutes to prove himself. That’s fair. But there is a limit. You don’t have the right to push an entire fanbase to the “Enough, coach, we can’t watch this anymore” point. Persisting with a player who obviously isn’t delivering, for reasons no one can explain convincingly, is one more symptom of that same stubbornness in error.
Put all of these names together and you get a disturbing picture: a spiral of footballers, each carrying a different problem, and in almost every case the thread leads back to the coach. It is Sergen Yalçın who has to untangle this knot. Squad selection, substitution patterns, the tactical identity that swings from one extreme to another – all of this requires a clear, public explanation. And not just a few phrases for the cameras, but a coherent narrative that convinces the vast majority of the Beşiktaş community. If nine out of ten people still see chaos, something is not being fixed.
Because, believe me, this level of uncertainty, contradiction, and internal disorder inside a team is poisonous. It destroys confidence, kills competition in a healthy sense, and replaces it with resentment. Stubbornly clinging to the same choices, the same flawed patterns, the same misused players – that is not discipline, that is not consistency. It is simply a bad habit. And bad habits, if not confronted, become identity.
This is not just about single players, but about the whole sporting project. When strikers are isolated, wingers are out of position, defenders are rotated without logic, and new signings never touch the ball, the message to the dressing room is clear: “There is no plan.” Once players start thinking that way, you lose the dressing room long before you lose the match. Fixing this requires courage: courage to admit mistakes, to bench the wrong favourites, to trust the right profiles, and to build a system that serves the squad you actually have, not the one you imagine.
On top of all that, the club is forced to deal with provocations off the pitch. Samsunspor president Yüksel Yıldırım, after the match against Beşiktaş, once again chose to inflame tensions. With the same careless tone, the same reckless style, with remarks unworthy of his position, he declared: “We crushed Beşiktaş and beat them.”
Let’s be very clear here. Mr. Yıldırım, even if you lined up a thousand of you side by side, you still wouldn’t measure up to Beşiktaş on any scale that matters. This choice of words violates the very spirit of sport. It doesn’t unite, it divides. It doesn’t calm, it provokes. We have sat down together before, talked after a TV program, and you were nothing like this then. That is why seeing you adopt this tone now is not just surprising; it is disappointing and shameful.
Beşiktaş, every time it steps onto the pitch under its crest, plays with honour. That is non-negotiable. There is no room for anything else, and if there ever were, Beşiktaş supporters themselves would never allow it. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But whatever happens, it happens within the boundaries of dignity and respect. Your expression, “we crushed Beşiktaş,” is beyond a simple slip of the tongue; it is a scandalous phrase. Until you apologise to the Beşiktaş community, your presidency at Samsun means nothing in the eyes of this club’s people.
Respect between clubs is not a luxury; it is the foundation of the game. Presidents, managers and players come and go, but the badges remain. When someone in a high position normalises this kind of language, it legitimises hostility in the stands and violence in the discourse. Apologising is not a sign of weakness; it is an obligation when you cross the line.
As if that weren’t enough, we also had to listen to the comments of Galatasaray’s Second President Metin Öztürk after their match. He said, proudly: “I’m speaking after a win, Sallai got a yellow card in a position that was not a foul.” May you live long, dear executive; we couldn’t help but smile reading that. The moment he said, “in a position that was not a foul,” everything fell apart.
The player in question has earned a reputation for winning whistles in exactly those “not-a-foul” situations. He goes down under minimal contact, and the whistle blows. If there is someone who has brought his team countless free-kicks and advantages from “non-foul positions,” it is him. The footballer’s name may be Sallai, but in this story the real “Sallai” expert seems to be the executive himself, twisting definitions to fit the narrative. So for once, the system worked the other way around. Maybe the referee also experienced a brief conceptual confusion and decided to whistle in the opposite direction. It happens.
What all this shows is that Turkish football has a chronic illness: everyone complains about referees, but almost no one looks in the mirror. Club leaders who use irresponsible language, executives who rewrite reality after victories, coaches who cling to their mistakes as if they were principles – this is how trust collapses. When you add tactical stubbornness to emotional stubbornness, you get a toxic mix.
For Beşiktaş specifically, the road out of this tunnel is clear, even if it is difficult. First, merit must return to the centre of every decision. If Oh is your striker, you must build a system that feeds him. If Cerny is a winger, you don’t turn him into a box-to-box midfielder just to justify another player’s minutes. If Djalo is physically fine, he should be allowed to play consecutive matches and build form. If Vasquez was signed, he must be tested. If Cengiz is not delivering, his role must be reduced, not stubbornly enlarged.
Second, communication with the supporters has to be honest and straightforward. Fans can accept rebuilding, transitional seasons, even painful defeats, but they will not accept chaos without explanation. When line-ups change wildly and players are misused without logic, people feel that their club is being run on impulse, not on a plan. Explaining tactical choices, admitting errors, and outlining a clear vision would calm nerves and rebuild trust.
Finally, everyone connected to Beşiktaş must internalise a simple truth: insisting on what is clearly wrong is not loyalty, it is sabotage. Holding on to flawed tactics, misjudged hierarchies, or misguided egos does not make anyone strong. It makes the club weaker. Real strength lies in being able to say, “We got this wrong,” and then actually changing course.
Right now, many supporters feel exactly what one fan summed up perfectly: “There is no Beşiktaş team on the pitch. There are eleven players wearing Beşiktaş shirts.” Turning that sentence around – turning those shirts back into a real team – starts with breaking this habit of stubbornly persisting in error. Until that happens, no transfer, no referee decision, no rival president’s words will matter as much as the damage we inflict on ourselves.