The Hunter Became the Hunted

There is a joke that everyone surely knows. A 90-year-old man takes his young wife to the doctor because she is pregnant. Even though the doctor tries to explain to the old man that there is a problem with this pregnancy and that the father might be someone else, the old man insists that the pregnancy is his own. Upon such insistence, the doctor tells the old man how he shot a bird with a walking stick.

Anyway, I won't write the whole thing so they don't shut down our column; you can look up the rest of the joke on the internet.

Don't ask what this joke has to do with our topic. Read the lines below.

I am not very interested in football. In the past, we knew quite a few names of football players from both the world and Turkey. Teams had a soul. City teams were in fierce competition. Even players whose names were identified with their teams made it a matter of honor to line up behind the captains of other teams and would not transfer despite high offers.

Now, clubs have become like Blackwater or Wagner. When "İddaa"—betting, or as it is hidden, "godless gambling"—got involved, things got complicated. When Michel Platini, a legend of the past and a role model for children, got involved, football became completely mired in filth. Rampant womanizers like Sepp Blatter took over the federations. Moral football players who understood the business were kept out of the system.

When you look at the crooked hyenas in the federations, you associate them with gambling, but when you see specially gifted people like Platini, who thrilled thousands in the stadium and millions of people from different nations in front of the television, in this filth, it ruins your appetite.

A football without identity is being experienced in the world. Turkey, of course, is getting its share of this.

There are no longer teams whose starting eleven even the child on the street or the woman in the field could recite.

What else can be expected in an environment where gambling has taken sports under its influence?

Then, in an environment where so much filth is rotting football in the world, another event happened that we said would never happen. The state came to the rescue of a team whose staff was unsuccessful.

The police department sent a message saying, "Don't criticize the head coach!!!"

A fan group's season tickets were canceled. Club officials went to the stands to tell them to chant in favor of the coach.

You were a hunter under state protection, but you will become the prey of the fans. If you also think that you were the one who made the team champions after all these years, find the joke above and read it. It won't be long now.