Fenerbahçe Coach Ismail Kartal: “We’ve Taken a Huge Step Towards the Championship!”

Fenerbahçe’s Head Coach Ismail Kartal made statements at the press conference after the match. Kartal said, “We didn’t have much chance to prepare for the match with a lot of training. We had another match in three days. Karagümrük’s position in the league was clear, and we knew how well they would prepare against us. Although we couldn’t play productive football in the first half as we wanted, we talked about how it shouldn’t be like this and that we should turn the game around together. We started the match well by discussing this. We found chances by playing our own game, and we scored goals. We managed to win tonight. We could have won by a bigger margin. Karagümrük is also a good team. I wish them success in their remaining matches.

“WE ARE TRYING TO DO OUR JOB”

Kartal, in his statement addressing those who criticize him on social media, said, “I am a person who knows what I’m doing. I don’t care about what others say. My actions speak for themselves. And I will continue to do so. I trust my team. We’ve come with a strong game so far. Even when we were 3-0 down, I continued to stand tall. We brought the match to 3-2, and it could have been 4-3. We are trying to do our job. I’ve dedicated my life to this. At the end of the day, we’ll see what happens together.”

“LIVAKOVIC DISPLAYED THE BEST PERFORMANCE OF THE SEASON”

Responding to a question about Croatian goalkeeper Livakovic being psychologically affected after the Trabzonspor match, Ismail Kartal said, “Livakovic is an important investment that we, as a management, made together. He’s a very emotional kid, and we constantly talk. He played very well today, displaying the best performance of the season. I hope he will continue to improve his performance.”

“I KNOW THE HEART OF FOOTBALL”

Kartal, emphasizing his very close relationship with his players, said, “My players also know that whoever deserves to play will play. We achieve this through training and assessing the players’ performances match by match. The halftime talks are also somewhat related to experience. I come from within football. I know the heart of football. With the trust and respect I have for my players and the dialogues we have, everything is transparent where I am. We have a relationship based on mutual respect and trust.”

“THE FOREIGN REFEREE WHO CAME TO VAR SEEMS TO BE GOOD TO ME”

Commenting on the referee‘s performance during the match, Kartal said, “In my opinion, the referee managed the match correctly today. The penalty situation that our opponent expected was a deceiving move. The penalty we expected was stopped, and the penalty wasn’t given. Our goal was obstructed when we were one-on-one. The foreign referee who came to VAR seems to be good to me.”

“WE START ALL OUR WORK FROM TOMORROW MORNING”

Kartal also spoke about the remainder of the season, saying, “It seems that this will continue like this until the end of the season. We have plans to win every match according to the opponent. Our most important match is the Olympiakos match on Thursday. We will start all our work to pass that round from tonight onwards, starting tomorrow morning,” concluding his words.

“The football we played in the first half didn’t suit us. Our opponent was very well prepared for the match. We couldn’t do what we wanted, and our opponent didn’t allow us to. We talked about changes during halftime and the players shaking themselves up. In the second half, we started to play a bit more like ourselves. We could have won by a bigger margin; we had very clear chances. Today, we took a huge step towards the championship. We play a match every three days, and we haven’t played a match this far from what we wanted for a long time. Karagümrük is a good team, and I congratulate Tolunay Kafkas. They really pushed us.”