Adana Soccer

I asked one of the Turkish Nationals (TN) in my office to take me to an Adana soccer game. I was interested to see how wild the fans where and how good the teams are. John and Mike came along with me. The first thing I noticed was that the concession stand was a little different...not hot dogs, hamburgers or nachos. I had a soda and sunflower seeds.

Adana's 3rd tier team was playing a town near the Iraq border. The game was pretty good. Adana was leading 1-0 when we left after halftime (it was late on a weeknight and we just went to get a flavor of stadium/crowd). Adana is in the orange.


We sat right next to the crazy fans. There were two sections that cheered and sang the whole game. You can see John in the picture. They kept yelling at him to sing and stand. We finally figured out the "Adana! Adana! Adana!" cheer but that is about it.

This is the entrance turnstile. Mike and John had to go through it with some police who were behind us. They both pushed it forward without walking into it and their tickets wouldn't make it move again. Mike and his police guy were walking forward, but John's guy turned around and they were facing each other. The ended up having to shuffle awkwardly to get inside. Then on the way out my TN and John went out and found that the outside door was locked. My TN was able to find a ticket on the floor that opened it, but John was stuck in there. We went looking for someone to open it up. While we were searching, a crazy Turk started pounding on the door yelling at John. If the guy would have made it in, John would have been stuck in the space with him. The look of fear on John's face was priceless. Luckily a police officer let him out before the guy broke the door down.

It was a good time. I'll probably go back with a bigger group and stay for the entire game. I'd like to see the celebration/demonstration after it is over.