Sports commentator Oktay Haluk Doğan evaluates the spending limits announced by the TFF for 12punto: Spending limits and debt-ridden Turkish football

SPENDING LIMITS AND DEBT-RIDDEN TURKISH FOOTBALL

In a football environment where just the "big four" clubs have a debt of 23.3 billion TL according to last year's Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) reports, the TFF, which buries its head in the sand when it comes to solving problems, has added to this by granting a spending limit of 13 billion to Super Lig teams like a handout during the mid-season transfer window that began today. 

Teams that have made it a habit to use their limits to the fullest in every transfer window have already begun making transfers with great extravagance. 

The Federation, which merely watches the astronomical figures paid to those leaving and arriving, has never thought to implement regulations to bring Turkish football to a balanced budget from the past to the present.

While teams occasionally gain from introducing young Turkish players, many of whom are of foreign origin like Cengiz, Arda, Ferdi, Kaan, and Kerem, to the football stage, they have failed to make this a continuity. The biggest reason for this has been the nonsensical rules that the TFF changes frequently.

The Federation, which showed the absurdity of changing the foreign player rule again while I was writing this article (we will address this topic separately in the coming weeks), has added a new one to its incompetence.

There is no rational explanation for granting a spending limit of 435 million dollars in a mid-season transfer window in an environment where a club president stated that the total broadcasting revenue last year was 92 million dollars.

In a half-century-old professional football league, we have not seen any concern for planning, learning from mistakes, returning to one's roots, not wasting resources, and uncovering one's own values by using them for their intended purpose. 

The Altınordu team, an exemplary club that has brought important names to Turkish and European football, is being left to close down right before our eyes.

Because of teams that end up in lawsuits with almost every player due to sloppy transfers, Turkey has the worst record at UEFA. 

In our football, where millions of dollars are poured in every year, besides the shame of being the country where money is earned most easily after China and the Arab world, we consider it a skill to console ourselves with and exaggerate the few international successes that lack continuity despite so much spending.

They asked the Portuguese dictator Salazar how he managed the country alone for 41 years. 

With a slight smile, he replied "Tres F," meaning "with the 3 Fs"; Fado (music), Fatima (religion), and Football.

In countries like ours, politicians manage to prolong their own tenure by keeping the public intensely occupied with these things and placing them at the center of their lives. Instead of questioning life and those who govern them, the public distracts themselves with these things and consoles themselves with small, short-lived happinesses.

This reality underlies the fact that the public can name all the football teams and knows which football team bought which foreign player for how many millions of dollars.

For this reason, because it serves the interests of politics to keep Turkish football in this state of chaos and mire, they do not take their hands off it and leave it to its own devices. This wrong is being imposed as if it were right. 

But it should be known that; for our country, which does not even possess half of the resources of the China and the Arab world mentioned above, to spend these figures is a typical reflection of the state of "having no money for a drink," and the attitude of the federation is pure "indifference."

News Source: 12punto