Referee, Lincoln steal the show as Galatasaray wins

A surprise goal from Brazilian Sandro Mendonca gave Hacettepe, which is the worst scoring team in the league, the lead in the 33rd minute of the game but the Ankara team’s resistance lost its edge when midfielder Marien Tozo was shown a red card two minutes later. And Galatasaray got over the shock quickly, when Milan Baros shot a loose ball into the goal and equaled the score in the last seconds of the first half.

The point break of the game was in the 56th minute, however, as François Zoko handballed in the box, leading to a penalty kick. But referee Süleyman Abay mistakenly gave the yellow card to Admir Teli.

The spot kick was taken by Baros, who would complete his hat trick with a third goal 15 minutes later.

Wrong card
Four minutes after Baros’ third goal, Teli was shown another yellow card to be sent off, much to the Hacettepe players’ anger. Galatasaray played the remainder of the game without shedding much sweat, and that was best seen when Lincoln juggled the ball to the cheers of the crowd at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium. But his spectacular moves were not quite welcomed by the team from the capital city.

Speaking after the game, coach Erdoğan Arıca accused Lincoln of "not having respect."

"Players should act with more respect for each other," said Arıca. "Seeing a player making fun of our players when we were playing with ten men was hard for us to take. I would have congratulated him when the game was being played 11 on 11."

However, Galatasaray coach Michael Skibbe did not agree.

"I don’t believe that he [Arıca] is right," he said. "Lincoln does spectacular moves in every game. And in that occasion, he did not have any opponent in front of him, so he was not humiliating anyone. He is doing that to show his abilities."

Meanwhile, Hacettepe chairman Turgay Kalemci’s agenda was the first yellow card wrongfully shown to Teli. "If the referee admitted that he showed the card mistakenly to Teli instead of Zoko in his post-game report," said Kalemci, "in that case the game should be replayed."

Speaking to the national TV channel, NTV, former referee Ertuğrul Dilek agreed that the Turkish Football Federation should call for a replay.

Dilek gave the example of the Fenerbahçe-Çaykur Rizespor game during the 2003-04 season, which was eventually replayed due to a mistake by referee Ali Aydın.

Aydın showed two yellow cards to Çaykur’s Gustavo Victoria, but forgot to send the player off and the Federation decided that the game needed to be replayed due to that mistake. According to Dilek, Abay’s mistake is worthy of Aydın’s mistake, and the same procedure should be applied, which is a replay of the game.