Bursaspor vs. Karşıyaka

On Sunday, I went to my first Bursaspor, the city's soccer team, match. It was against Karşıyaka, a team from a city called Izmir, and it was incredible! We sat in the section known as "Texas" and is prominently labelled by the gargantuan green banner hanging above it proudly displaying the message, "Texas supporters club". Basically it's the area of soccer hooligans that stand on their seats the entire time waving flags and scarves, throwing paper, chanting, whistling, shouting, and in all honesty, are the very spirit of the game.

It's hard not to get all caught up in the action, whether it be from the excitement of watching a sport live, or just joining the shouting and jumping so as not to get jumped on in the surely over-sold seating area by the three other folks including you attempting to stand on the seat made for one sitting person. Bursa took the match 3-1, and it was an amazingly fun experience despite the freezing rain/sleet.

I managed to get a 45sec video clip of my favorite chant. It was even before the match had started, just before Bursaspor took the field for warmups. Once you see the excitement at this point, you can imagine how it was for the actual game! You may notice an open seat here and there in the stands, but trust me once the match actually began, every seat had a butt in it, even the ones that weren't under the (leaky) overhang.

Well, that is except for the sections fenced off by riot police, some adorning riot shields, for the opposing team's fans who were snuck into the match once the game began for safety reasons. If there's one thing you don't want to do is let two opposing team's soccer fans get anywhere near each other. Anyway, those sections were almost empty-it was quite a pitiful turnout from Karşıyaka's supporters. You can download the clip here. And look at some photos here. I haven't labelled them yet or put the link up in the photo archive, but it will happen eventually.