Women football players get into fistfight

DİYARBAKIR

Turkish women’s football league has witnessed the first incident of “violence in sports” in history, with players of the Süper Lig team Amedspor attacking the Fenerbahçe footballers at the end of a match in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

Fenerbahçe won the match 2-1 with the last-minute penalty goal on April 2.

Tension rose following the second goal between the two teams’ players and the spectators started throwing things onto the pitch.

All of a sudden, the players got into a fistfight near the touchline close to the benches of the two teams.

Security units had to intervene to break up the fight and Fenerbahçe players could leave the pitch with a police escort.

“It saddened us to see such events on a pitch where women play,” Nihan Su, the head coach of Fenerbahçe, said after the match.

When asked how the fight started, Su said, “The opponent players made a physical abuse against one of my players who was at the touchline alone and defenseless.”

Among the things the spectators threw on them were “bricks and bats,” the coach alleged.

Ali Koç, the president of Fenerbahçe, said the events were “disgraceful for Turkish football” in his condemnation statement.

Amedspor officials held officials of Fenerbahçe responsible for the events, underlining that “they were the ones provoking the Amedspor players.”

Saying that their four players were injured, the Diyarbakır side underlined that they would file an official complaint against Fenerbahçe at the Turkish Football Federation (TFF).

Women’s football started in Turkey in 1971 with the personal efforts of Turkish coaches establishing local teams in Istanbul, the capital Ankara, the northwestern province of Kocaeli and Bursa, the western province of İzmir and the Black Sea province of Samsun. The first professional women’s league started in 1993.

The league was halted between 2001 and 2006 due to economic problems.