"After 20 years of football, this is the longest press conference of my career," he announces with a wry smile. "Welcome to Turkey," replies Ali Koc, the billionaire president of Fenerbahce.
And of course it always starts like this: with smiles and quips, handshakes and camera flashes, with the promise of something new and pristine. With warm tributes to his predecessor and a catchy pre-written slogan "the shirt is going to be my skin," he says at his unveiling - and the sincerely expressed belief that there is nowhere on Earth he would rather be than right here, in Europe's ninth-best league, at a club that hasn't won the title in a decade, preparing for the Champions League second qualifying round in late July.
"What is ambition?" he asked enigmatically yesterday afternoon. "To have a London club and fight to be sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth? To have a team in Italy stay fifth, sixth, seventh? To be in Portugal? Ambition is to play to win. Ambition is to feel the heat. For me, Fenerbahce means ambition."
This story is from the June 04, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the June 04, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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