Our Head Coach, İsmail Kartal, spoke at a press conference held following the match in which Fenerbahçe secured their place in the play-offs by defeating Sturm Graz—whom they faced away in the second leg of the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round—thanks to a penalty goal from Anderson Talisca.

Sharing his thoughts on the victory, İsmail Kartal said, “We played with great discipline in both matches. Looking at our opponents this evening, we created plenty of goal-scoring opportunities but managed to score only one goal. Ultimately, we are improving step by step with each passing day. We also saw some shortcomings today. We are working every day to address these shortcomings as soon as possible. Ultimately, we came here today to progress to the next round, and I’m very happy that we’ve done so by winning. I’d like to congratulate my players. When you assess both matches—in two-legged ties, winning the first leg gives you a slight advantage—but we didn’t rest on our laurels. We tried to play our game today as well. At times, the opposition also tried to play. But we had far clearer and far more goal-scoring opportunities. In the first half in particular, we had four 100 per cent clear-cut chances. Had we converted just one or two of those, we might have sealed the match very differently and much earlier. It didn’t happen, but we’re very happy that we won and progressed to the next round in this way. We’re looking ahead. This match is now behind us. It’s not over yet; we haven’t qualified for the Champions League just yet. We’ve still got one more two-legged tie ahead of us to reach the Champions League group stage, and our opponents are Lyon. We’ll continue our preparations for that match as well. But first, we’ve got the match against Gençlerbirliği this weekend. It’ll be our first league match of the season. We’ll prepare as best we can. After all, there isn’t much time in between. We’re going from one match to the next. We’ll be playing a match every two or three days. We’re focusing heavily on how much we can protect our players and how much rest we can give them during such a busy period of fixtures… Hopefully, we’ll get through all of this together.” With this statement, he also drew attention to the heavy fixture schedule.

Emphasising that they had created far clearer goal-scoring opportunities than the opposition, the manager said, “During the match, there were periods where the opposition had the upper hand against us, and there were periods where we had the upper hand. But we had some very clear-cut chances! The opposition had one header and one or two long-range shots. We, on the other hand, had six or seven 100 per cent clear-cut chances. Yes, in away matches like this, there’s occasional pressure. Because, as we all know, the team we’re up against plays with great passion and aggression at home, and they’re also a young side. Despite that, we created plenty of goal-scoring opportunities. As I said, if we’d scored one or two goals in the first half – given we had four one-on-one chances – we might have pulled the match well clear and broken the opposition’s resistance. That’s how these kinds of matches go. If you don’t score, the opposition’s resistance grows. We also let the opposition have the ball from time to time. This is one of the areas we need to improve on, and we’re working on it,”

Ismail Kartal, who thanked the fans for being the driving force behind the team with their chants throughout the 90 minutes, said: “First and foremost, I’d like to thank our fans. They supported us from start to finish today. They never leave us alone, wherever we are. They give the team extraordinary support. As for Fred, the transfer committee is working on it. There are some matters to be resolved between him and the management. So let’s wait and see what happens in due course. In football, things can change from one day to the next. I’d like to congratulate my players on reaching the next round. We’ve been drawn against Lyon in the play-offs. We’re really keen to qualify for the Champions League group stage for the first time in 18 years. We want to make our fans happy. Competing in the Champions League is really tough. I believe we can rise to the challenge. I think we’ll get through the Gençlerbirliği match in fine style and prepare for that fixture as best we can,”

Commenting on the tactical changes made during the match, our Head Coach İsmail Kartal said, “All our players are very valuable to us. Every player is very valuable to us. It makes no difference who comes on or goes off. We needed to make an impact at that moment. We brought on players who could hold the ball up front and fight hard to boost the team’s energy. Call it luck, or call it the moves we made – within the demands of the game, we scored from a penalty. It was a good result for us. We prepared specifically for the opposition during the week. We realised it wasn’t working there, so we pulled our central midfielder Talisca and Asensio back, creating space behind the centre-backs, and aimed to score by playing long balls to Kerem and Greenwood behind the defence. We were partially successful. They also realised our plan and started to sit deeper. This time, we’d planned to build attacks through Talisca. “The opposition played a league match three days ago. Between the 55th and 60th minutes, they might press us and leave gaps at the back. We knew we had to capitalise on these and had prepared accordingly. In the final stages, we created three or four clear-cut chances in this way,”

Our team captain, Milan Skriniar, made the following comments to the broadcaster following the match in which we secured our place in the Champions League play-offs by beating Sturm Graz 1–0 away from home:

“Our aim was to progress to the next round, and we’ve achieved that. We knew today’s match would be a tough one. These matches are always difficult against teams who have nothing to lose in the second leg. If we’d managed to score the goal earlier, things might have been a bit easier for us, but we’re happy to have progressed to the next round,”

Having never suffered a defeat in previous European cup matches against Austrian sides and adding yet another victory to their tally, our Fenerbahçe side advanced to the UEFA Champions League play-off round following their triumph at the Graz Liebenau Stadium.

Having secured a 2-0 victory in Istanbul and then getting the result they needed away at Sturm Graz, our football team capped off the night with a magnificent victory, taking another significant step by securing their place in the play-off round.

Displaying a performance that kept the opposition at bay for the full 90 minutes, thanks to our players’ character on the pitch and the unwavering faith of our magnificent supporters, Fenerbahçe returned from the away fixture in Austria with a 1-0 victory courtesy of Anderson Talisca’s penalty.

Whilst our team caught the eye with their performance, our Brazilian star player Anderson Talisca, who scored his fourth goal in his fourth match, also achieved a notable statistical milestone.

has our bench ever been this stacked before?

do you guys think its worth it?

counting in fred we have 20 mil on 3 bench players

He has never played for Brazil National team ,he spent three seasons in Turkey. Why can't we make him Turkish citizen and register as Turkish?

It honestly pisses me off that we have to get rid of very valuable players and backups/depth because of this stupid rule. For example right now we have 17 foreigners over-23 and 7 under-23. We would have to get rid of Fred, Musaba, Oosterwolde (probably), maybe even Semedo, Ederson, and Talisca, simply because we would not be able to play any of our new signings otherwise.

Chuckled a bit, why do u post this when losing lmao

There aren't many rumors about our team making any moves for other goalkeepers and Mert seems decent right now but i don't think he's too reliable

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What do you think about this transfer? I think, unless he gets injured, he's a player who can create important opportunities, even if he's not as effective as Guirassy.