Eskişehirspor for life

It might come to some as a strange turnaround for me to decide to support a football team for the first time in 33 years having spent the rest of my life sitting on the fence as to which football team I support. When it comes to supporting national teams then no problem I always follow England and Turkey as family ties dictate, but when it comes to supporting local clubs I have never found one relevant enough to me to take an interest and to support any of the teams my friends support i.e. Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester united just makes no sense after all I’m not from north London or Manchester so these clubs hold little relevance to me on a personal level.


That all changed on the 26th October in Eskisehir when the decision was taken out of my hands. I went with my brother in law, sister in law and wife to watch Galatasaray play Eskisehir in the Turkish super league at a bar in Eskisehir city centre just outside the stadium. In an historic game Eskişehirspor hammered Galatasaray 4-2 and the city erupted into a mass outpouring of fanatical football fervour of which I of course joined in. This included the shaking from side to side of pretty much every car driving up the high street, a lot of chanting and dancing all in good spirit I might add. A video of this can be seen here.
However it was at this point we come to my inauguration as official Eskişehirspor for life supporter, I was dancing madly away to a guy playing a Zurna when I became aware of the fact I had drawn rather a lot of attention to myself, a tall pale Englishman dancing madly at the absolute epicentre of the nights football fervour, everything suddenly hushed for a moment and there was a murmuring in the crowd as all eyes fell upon me, someone asked my sister in law Sirma who I was, she giggled slightly nervously and whispered ES ES into my ear at which point I let rip with a full bodied rendition of Eskişehirspor’s football chant “Es Es Es Ki Ki Ki , Eski Eski Es!" which proceeded to be taken up by the thousands strong crowd of supporters around me, which I must say has been one of the highlights of my life so far leading a thousand plus people in a football chant in the city centre, priceless! After which many of the fans came to shake my hand and introduce themselves in the process adopting me as a fellow supporter, which kind of makes sense as Eskişehir is the closest thing I have to a home town in Turkey.

“Es Es Es Ki Ki Ki , Eski Eski Es!"