The Brawl of the Bosphorus (Sort of)

By: Daryl | April 13th, 2009

You’ve probably already heard about/read about/seen what happened in yesterday’s Istanbul derby, where the Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe players almost took the whole Battle of the Bosphorus thing a little too literally.

An on-field confrontation between (Mehmet Topal excepted) two entire teams is always going to be headline news. It illustrates the passion of a derby. Or something. But the truth is… nothing really happened.

After the initial incident (apparently Fener’s Diego Lugano headbutted Galatasaray’s Emre Asik) it’s basically just pushing and shoving. A lot of pushing and shoving, yes. And there are a few hand on neck moments. But it’s mostly still just pushing and shoving and a few players allowing themselves to be “held back” (as in “let me at ‘em but don’t really”). No one got hurt and no punches were thrown. I’m probably not the first person to point this out, but when footballers “brawl” all they’re really doing is playfighting.

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Category: World Football

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Wasa

Lugano is a virus... He red carded 3 times against Galatasaray in 2 years... A real jerk...
Musab

Actually one of them did "jump in", but he was brutally detained before he could actually do anything.

And yes, Lugano is a pig.
Marcus

Man so lucky the fans didnt jump in....woulda got real ugly
Utku

lugano is a pig. he has no place in turkish football and has been the center of controversy for the past two seasons.

the ref should have red carded lugano, seljuk sahin, emre asik, emre belezoglu, and sabri all earlier in the game. especially seljuk(he kicked umit karan int he fact less than a minute after he saw a yellow).

the first half was all galatasaray domination though, it had a lot of potential to be a great derby but failed to deliver
Bruno Romani

Lugano is king!
j

The brawl was very close to spilling over to something far bigger and security did a good job to keeping it contained. However it was the culmination of a series of horrible challenges that should have seen Semih Şentürk and Diego Lugano red-carded early.