Your new favorite team: Beşiktaş

Five years ago, Besiktas was facing bankruptcy, the club was excluded from all European competitions, and the star of the team was Hugo Almeida. Today - just five years later - Besiktas has won the two championships in a row, it has the most beautiful stadium in the country and on Tuesday it got the ticket for the Champions League’s last 16.

If these premises aren’t enough to make your heartworm for the Turkish side, let’s add the fact that the starting striker is also world youtuber-footballer, that with the black shirt Ricardo Quaresma restarted to deliver its best trivela, and that last summer they tried to sign Cristiano Ronaldo with a video campaign on social networks. But let’s proceed with an order before any of that happened.

The Resurrection

In early 2012, the three big clubs of Istambul - Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, and Besiktas - risked becoming two. Besiktas was just sentenced with the expulsion from any European competition due to a betting scandal, the club had €280M of debts, and 142 legal arguments on itself. It looked like the team was destined to drown in the Bosphorus waters, but Fikret Orman, elected as president in late 2012, saved it. Without the incomes from the European competitions, the new president started a strong campaign of budget reductions, followed by a plan to improve profits, a similar strategy that the one used by Joan Laporta at Barcelona in 2003.

Orman gave the team to the Croatian coach Slaven Bilic, that gave a tactic organization to the team and was able to compete with Galatasaray and Fenerbahce - that back in the days had some players like Drogba, Kuyt, Raul Meireles, and Sneijder - until the last game-days of the season. At the beginning of 2013, the old İnönü Stadium was torn down to begin the construction of the new Vodafone Arena.

A New Era 

After two seasons and two third places in the league, Slaven Bilic moved to England to manage West Ham United, and Besiktas entrusted the management to Şenol Günes. The Turkish guru was the leader of the miraculous expeditions at the 2002 World Cup, when Turkey reached the semi-finals and ended up as third, with players that made history, like Rüştü Reçber and Hasan Sas.
On the football market, Besiktas used a new strategy: young Turkish talented players and some-old-European-trash-that-we-hope-will-shine-again, ofter with one-year loan deals. In summer 2014 arrived Mario Gomez with his fragile knees from Fiorentina, Ricardo Quaresma and his trivela from Porto, and José Sosa lost principito in Ukraine. Besiktas dominated the league, winning the SuperLig after a six-year drought, Mario Gomez was the top-scorer with 26 goals and José Sosa the best assist man.

The 2016/17 season was almost the copy of the previous one. Even if Mario Gomez decided to leave Turkey after the failed golpe and Sosa was sold at AC Milan for €8M, the club was strengthened that during the summer. In that transfer market, Besiktas signed Ryan Babel from Liverpool, the talented Brazilian striker Anderson Talisca from Benfica, Caner Erkin from Inter Milan, Gokhan Inler from Leicester, and Aboubakar with a one-year loan from Porto. The result was the same of the previous year, and Besiktas become the champion with a 4-points margin on the second, celebrating the success at the Vodafone Arena, the best stadium in Turkey. The only bad news was the elimination from the Champions League for a 6-0 defeat against an already eliminated Dynamo Kiev in December.

Besiktas now, the coolest club in Europe

The 2017/18 season has started with a spectacular and yet coherent transfer market campaign, signing Pepe from Real Madrid, Gary Medel from Inter, Alvaro Negredo, and Lens. For the various announcement the club’s social media managers went wild with the #cometobesiktas campaign:

But to buy decayed foreign footballers is not only a market strategy but - together with making viral videos and play some friendlies in China - is part of president Orman’s strategy: to bring the Besiktas brand out of Turkish borders, enlarging the foreign fanbase. Turkish football hasn’t a massive appeal abroad, it’s not broadcasted in any country different than Turkey, even if the clubs and the supporters make the SuperLig a funny and entertaining championship. The Vodafone Arena - that was built on the grounds of the old stadium - is placed in the richest and wealthiest part of the city, making the comparison with Chelsea’s branding strategy an easy one.

Even with the International calling of the club, Besiktas remained a true Turkish club. The Vodafone Arena looks like a massive terrace, where all the supporters stand up, singing together for the team. The atmosphere at the stadium is unmatchable, with the noise that is so high that Timo Werner - Leipzig’s striker - demanded the substitution during a Champions League game for the extreme noise from the stands.

On a technical level, Güneş maintained the Turkish soul of the team: Özyakup and Cenk Tosun were interesting young talents and they now are important footballers. And - at least judging from the derby against Fenerbahce - the foreign footballers also got the roughness of Turkish derbies.

This season, Besiktas seems to have brought its attention and energies to the Champions League, where it has dominated the group with Porto, Monaco, and Leipzig. It’s third in the league, four-point behind Galatasaray and İstanbul Başakşehir, but with the best defense of the league. In the Champions League, the Turkish plated their best games, the team plays a fast and spectacular football, thanks to Babel, Quaresma, and the talent of the 1994-born Anderson Talisca, grown in Benfica’s academy.

Other than enjoy a sense of revenge in watching this resurrected players win and celebrate, Besiktas also has the best football youtuber ever, Ryan Babel. If you have never seen one of his videos, I’m leaving you one right here, so that you can understand why you have to love this Besiktas.