The #LUFC Breakfast Debate (Monday 26th July) - Cold water poured on Okay Yokuslu speculation

[Ellandback1]

Good Morning. It's Monday 26th July, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road...


Cold water poured on Okay Yokuslu speculation

Leeds fans have been told that any hopes of signing Okay Yokuslu is 'impossible' because... he's Turkish!

The 6' 3 combative midfielder showed his qualities during the recent Euros, and although Turkey were eliminated up stage, Yokuslu's impressive passing qualities (94% - 137 mins) caught the eye of Leeds Director of football Victor Orta. The 27yo applies his trade with Celta Vigo in La Liga. He signed for the Spanish outfit three years ago. Before that, he enjoyed spells with Süper Lig outfits Kayserispor and Altay.

However, the animosity between Turkish football and Leeds Utd is still strong. Whilst I'm not sure what Turkish fans have to be bitter about, Leeds supporters will never forget the eve of the Uefa Cup Semi final against Galatasaray in April 2000 when Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight were murdered. Yokuslu's agent was quoted as saying that they are aware of Leeds’ interest, however that the ‘politics’ surrounding the deal may make it impossible. Do Leeds really have an issue with Turkish football in general? Is it not just Galatasaray we have an issue with for obvious reasons?





Leeds capture Klassen

Kristoffer Klaesson is on his way to Leeds for a fee believed to be between in the region of £1.6m - 2m It is unknown whether the 20 year old shot stopper has secured his work permit yet, though it is not expected to be a problem. Although only 20, Klaesson has made 57 appearances for Vålerenga, conceding 80 goals and keeping 13 clean sheets over the last three seasons. He is expected to become Illan Meslier's understudy, and first choice for the U23's! Messrs Orta and Bielsa will be delighted at Klassen's capture. He has been on their radar for a long time!





No Turkish delight for Alioski

On a brighter note, Aliski has snubbed a move to Galatasaray and is expected to join Saudi Arabian side Al-Ahli Saudi. Whilst the move makes no footballing sense, he is likely to finish his career a lot richer. A seven figure signing on fee, and weekly salary of circa £45,000 awaits the North Macedonian International. I wonder whether he'll be able to get away with the same kind on antics in Saudi Arabia? I'm sure, we all wish him well!





Huggins to stay

Multiple reports suggesting that Leeds starlet Niall Huggins had been let go, may have been premature after LeedsLive reported that the versatile 20 year old wants to fight for his place at the club. Huggins joined the Whites at the tender age of 9, working his way up through the age groups at Thorp Arch. He also broke through into the Wales U21 squad.

It is likely he will continue to work under to continue Mark Jackson during their first season in the U23's top flight! Huggins signed three year deal with the club, last December. Its admirable that the 20yo wants to stay and fight for his place!

[SG90]

Huh? Yokuslu has never played for scum. Anyway you can't hate the whole of Turkey just because of one club. Scum are hated in Turkey by many clubs as well.

Good news about Huggins. I knew 'Football Insider' were spouting drivel, as per usual.

[YorkshireSquare]

Don't have a problem with Turkey, I have a problem with Galatasaray!

Is he a player we are really in for though?

[Chilli D]

Don't have a problem with Turkey, I have a problem with Galatasaray!

Is he a player we are really in for though?

No is probably the answer to your question YS.

[Chilli D]

I'm pleased Huggins is staying.
He should have a least this season with us to see how he progresses.

[mothbanquet]

Can't help but feel this 'anti-Turkish' (not anti-THAT club) sentiment has been manufactured a bit by the media here. Can't say I've come across anybody with those sorts of feelings.

Happy for Alioski, he'll always be one of our promotion legends. May he get rich, fat and happy.

[Cjay]

Its irrational to hold a tragedy caused by 1 club and its scummy fans against an entire nation.

Galatasaray are the scumbags not necessarily the whole country.

That being said Yokuslu was pretty crap, the only impressive player at WBA was Pereira.

Kristoffer Klaesson's transfer confuses me. The level he plays at is crap, having done some reading it seems he isnt that highly rated with many of his current clubs fans suggesting he shouldn't even be their number 1 yet and he has made multiple howlers in just the last 2 games alone.

It seems a strange one, is he really any better than Caprille?

Good luck to Ali and good luck to Huggins, fair play if he wants to fight for his place.

[Cjay]

Also had another horrible thought.

Apparently Forshaw is back in training now.

If we cant get Gallagher (please say we dont) would the club be tempted into using the zombie Adam Forshaw?

[Ellandback1]

The problem shouldn’t have been Alioski or his next club, it’s how Galatasaray dealt with that tragedy

By Phil Hay Jul 25

In the early hours of the morning after the death of two Leeds United supporters in Istanbul, Peter Ridsdale met with a delegate from UEFA at one of the city’s police stations.

By that stage he was exhausted. He had been up all night receiving news of the stabbings, inflicted during violence which broke out on the eve of a UEFA Cup tie between Leeds and Galatasaray. He had travelled to the hospital where injured fans were being treated and arranged payment for a blood transfusion for Kevin Speight, one of the two who died. He was taken to identify the other, Chris Loftus, in the morgue after doctors mistook him for a family member.

Ridsdale can visualise it all 21 years on: the lay-out of the hospital, the chaos inside, the panicked confusion. And worse things too. As chairman of Leeds, he told the UEFA official that it would make sense to postpone the first leg of the semi-final which Leeds and Galatasaray were about to play. In the circumstances, it was a total irrelevance and too highly-charged. Your choice, the official replied. But if you back out, you’ll forfeit the game and incur a 3-0 defeat. The English FA followed the line of least resistance. In its opinion, contesting the game was “the least worst option”.

Last year, on the 20th anniversary of the killings in Istanbul, The Athletic spoke to some of the people closest to the tragedy and some of the people most affected by it. Through different eyes and different viewpoints, a picture built up of the disregard and indifference with which they had been treated by those they looked to for help.

The Loftus family gave up on campaigning for justice in Turkey because they did not think the system cared about them. Leeds’ head of security at the game recalled police officers lining the corridors in Galatasaray’s ground as the players emerged from the dressing room; an attempt, in his eyes, to intimidate them as they prepared to go onto the pitch. Amid the fall-out and a world of shock in Leeds, Ridsdale suggested that the second leg at Elland Road would be safer without away fans. Galatasaray accused him of trying to gain an unfair sporting advantage.

Given that context — and these examples only really scratch the surface of everything that happened in April 2000 — there was no way in which a player like Gjanni Alioski could consider leaving Leeds and joining Galatasaray, as he did for many months, without bracing himself for a tense political path and the objection he encountered online. It takes a certain amount of nerve to put a foot in both camps, which is doubtless why Harry Kewell was able to do so in 2008 when he left Liverpool for the Ali Sami Yen. That deal took Kewell back to a stadium where he and Leeds once needed protection with riot shields. The images of that never grow old.

At this juncture, it should be said that Kewell and Alioski were not identical. Kewell grew up in Leeds’ academy and was in the starting line-up for both legs against Galatasaray. He was on the scene as the club grieved and as much as any other of David O’Leary’s players, he was in a position to fully comprehend both the impact of the killings and Galatasaray’s response to them.

Alioski had less of a cross to bear. He was eight when the deaths occurred and he was 25 when he came to England as a professional. The connection was not comparable to Kewell’s. As a free agent, he had a decision to make about how best to look after himself with his 30th birthday coming next year (and in the end, looking after himself meant joining Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia last night). It is his life and his career, much as the option of Galatasaray was incapable of arising without anyone passing comment.

Even so, the counterargument holds water. If the thought of a transfer like that sits uncomfortably then perhaps it should. It is wrong to presume to tell those who were affected by the events in Istanbul how to feel or how to react to a player taking Galatasaray’s money. Alioski was not part of that history but the history exists and the real story here — far more significant than Alioski or any other footballer per se — is the absence of any reconciliation over a night which feels as raw to those who witnessed it now as it did two decades ago; the lasting bitterness produced by a vacuum of empathy.

Kewell was quoted after joining Galatasaray as saying that “to blame Galatasaray for the tragedy in Istanbul is simply wrong and discriminatory”. That is true. But where Galatasaray failed, and where Ridsdale specifically felt resentment, was in grasping the scale of the tragedy and in refusing to accept that violence on the streets and a UEFA Cup tie could not be classed as unrelated events once the worst had happened. They ploughed on regardless, much like UEFA, and left Ridsdale thinking that their directors were more worried about distancing themselves from the stabbings than helping Leeds cope with them.

“I don’t think, even to this day, that Galatasaray would see the amount of press coverage or criticism as being fairly labelled against them,” Ridsdale said last year. “They felt we were overreacting.” In all the many layers of anger, that was one of them; the apparent inability to adopt some common decency.

A fortnight ago, Ridsdale was voted onto the EFL’s board. That decision drew much criticism, as well it might. His financial record at Leeds was dismal and Leeds never forget about it. But when it came to Istanbul, he and the club were remarkable in reacting quickly and with compassion. The families of the victims will tell you that. They have nothing but good words for Ridsdale’s conduct and nothing but gratitude for his support. In contrast, what Leeds saw in Galatasaray was a baffling lack of sympathy. And it is far too late to redress that now.

Whether this should dictate a transfer like the one Alioski was asked to ponder is a matter of opinion. It might be fair to say that the events of 2000 are a reason to dissuade a footballer with ties to Leeds from engaging with Galatasaray but not necessarily to prohibit him from signing, especially as time goes by. The complication here is that football has no right to dictate how people manage a grievance that goes so far beyond standard rivalry. Istanbul was life and death and more than focusing on Alioski himself, the attention on him generated by the very prospect of a move to Turkey itself should make us ask why it was ever allowed to come to this; a horrific episode which offered no chance of peace or proper closure.

[Ellandback1]

If you need 25 riot shields to allow yo to get on to the pitch - that is an unsafe environment.

They should have gone back to their dressing rooms.

[Leeds1000]

Welcome to Hell. And it was that night the players looked terrified coming onto the pitch. When people representing any club stab a
a fan from a opposing club its not going to be forgotten in a hurry. The people of Turkey are not responsible, neither are the majority of Galatasaray fans just a small number of cowards who probably wasn't even at the game and just joined in the trouble. If i remember correctly even the Taxi drivers were stopping to join in? (don't quote me on that tho).

20yr old Goalie is hardly the experienced keeper i thought people said we were after?

I can't blame Ali for lining his pockets, i am sure they have thrown a few Camels into the equation aswell. One lump or two.

[Ellandback1]

Welcome to Hell. And it was that night the players looked terrified coming onto the pitch. When people representing any club stab a
a fan from a opposing club its not going to be forgotten in a hurry. The people of Turkey are not responsible, neither are the majority of Galatasaray fans just a small number of cowards who probably wasn't even at the game and just joined in the trouble. If i remember correctly even the Taxi drivers were stopping to join in? (don't quote me on that tho).

20yr old Goalie is hardly the experienced keeper i thought people said we were after?

I can't blame Ali for lining his pockets, i am sure they have thrown a few Camels into the equation aswell. One lump or two.

Leeds fans were ready for the welcome to Hell placards, and landed at the airport with their own banner

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