The second siege of Vienna

It’s a sure thing that I am attracted to football more than I like to admit! The reason for which I sacrifice generous slices of my time when it is not impossible.

It’s a sure thing that I am attracted to football more than I like to admit! The reason for which I sacrifice generous slices of my time when it is not impossible. And the long evenings from the European Championship show, almost always, something more than football.

I know that I am not original, but I rediscovered, for example, the Turkish team, a team grimmer and more capable of mobilizing than six years ago, when it succeeded to finish third in the World Cup. The three tremendous games in which the janissaries have won each time at the finish line are not the result of a happening at all. Even if luck has its place in any game, even if the ball is always round, the Turkish extreme victories are the result of a certain sort of a team.

The Turkish National team does not seem to have much in common with the suave and generous Olympic spirit, which has been whispering in our ears that the most important thing is to participate. They want to win. And they want it regardless of the score written at a certain time on the table. For the Turks the match is not just a game, it's a struggle, a historical tournament. The vigilance does not decrease, the muscles don’t relax, the attention is not scattered, regardless of what the opponents do. It’s a question of life and death, a question of honor. If the score is three to null for the adversary, one continues to fight, because it is totally different when the score becomes three to one. And so on, until the last moment.

The Turks don’t have "psychological moments." However, not in the way the other teams accuse them to. They can be wrong, they can end up in limit situations, but that does not discourage them. They seem to live a "psychological moment" continuously and evenly. There are teams that are affected by the strikers’ misses as well as by successes. They are able to concede a goal a minute after they scored, just because they were destined to. The Turks don’t do this, they look like a continuous conveyor belt, which goes from their goal to their enemies’ goal. They don’t make any evil calculations either, they don’t stay back in their half when they lead (even though it rarely happened), they don’t wait for the penalty shootout exhausted during the second half in extra-time. They are professional football players without doubt, but don’t show the standard reflexes that the normal professionals usually show.

Regardless of the results in the semifinals, the Western neighbors of this country have a lot to learn from it. In the same way in which Germany came back. It reminded us of the past Croatian rush and of the incredible Russian force.  

You might expect Romanized conclusions in the end, you might expect some connections from me between the lines above and the Romanian football. I don’t believe this is necessary. Anyway, you can do that. Those who haven’t done so already.