Bursaspor - A Turkish Delight

The Big Reveal

Name: Bursaspor Kulübü Derneği
Nickname: Yeşil Timsahlar (Green Crocodiles)
Stadium: Bursa Büyükşehir Stadium
Capacity: 43,761

Training Facilities: Excellent
Youth Facilities: Excellent
Junior Coaching: Adequate
Youth Recruitment: Basic

Honours;
Spor Toto Super Lig: 2010
Ziraat Turkiye Kapasi: 1986
TFF 1.Lig: 2006
TFF Super Kupa: 1986, 2010, 2015

Bursaspor Kulübü Derneği commonly known as Bursaspor, is a Turkish sports club located in the city of Bursa. Formed in 1963, the club colours are green and white, with home kits usually featuring both colours in a striped pattern.

In the 2009–10 season, the club's men's football team won its first Süper Lig title after finishing with 75 points, one point ahead of the runners-up Fenerbahçe. Bursaspor became the second club outside Istanbul to win a Süper Lig title, joining Trabzonspor who won the first of its six titles in 1975–76. The club has also won the Turkish Cup once and the Prime Minister's Cup twice, as well as the First League twice. The club's first, and most successful foray into European competition came in the 1974–75 European Cup Winners' Cup when it reached the quarter-finals. Bursaspor also took part in the 1986–87, losing in the first round, as well as the 1995 UEFA Intertoto Cup, where it lost in the quarter-finals.

Since winning the league title in 2010 the club has faced financial difficulites and now finds itself sitting in the 3rd tier of the Turkish football pyramid and is even now only classed as a midtable team showing how far they have fallen in just 12 years since winning the title and competing in European football. The downfall all happened from 2015 when the club started to try and spend big to be able to compete in Europe and it cost them as they ended up being relegated in 2019 before a second relegation 2 years later in 2021.

Stadium

Now this really is worth a google are you really need to see for yourself as its been designed with the clubs nickname in mind and there is a crocodile head on the outside of the stadium.

In 2015, it was time for the Bursa side to bid farewell to their historic Atatürk home, and move into their brand new Timsah Arena. Its imposing construction with plus 43,000 seats made it to the third largest in the league. “Timsah” is Turkish for “crocodile”, which is one of the team's two nicknames (“The Green Crocodiles”).The clubs downfall happened just after the opening of the new stadium sadly so not been able to fufill the full potential of it.

The Why?

So why have I decided to pick Bursaspor well its a number of reasons really. The first being that the Super Lig sits all the way down in 19th spot meaning it has a massive amount to grow which is the same as the national team sitting all the way down in 40th spot with their best finish in an international tournament being 3rd in 2002. Next the save lets me focus on bringing players youth players through the ranks making use of the clubs facilities once we improve the coaching and recruitment but hopefully we can still unearth the odd player before that. Finally its restoring a team back to the top of the country but can we do it quicker going back up than the fall down which is the main question. I've also never managed in Turkey before so getting to grip with the rules should be interesting as well.

(Thanks Wiki for the help)

Looking forward to updates on this 🙂