The 2023/24 season in the Turkish Süper Lig saw one of the closest title races we have seen in European football over the last couple of years.
The contestants were from different sides of the Bosporus in Istanbul: Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe.
Both teams were incredibly dominant throughout the season.
With very dedicated fans on both sides, the rich history of the rivalry showed up during the season, ending on an emotional last matchday when Galatasaray were able to secure the championship.
Fenerbahçe, under coach İsmail Kartal, scored 99 goals in 38 games and collected 99 points on their way to second place.
Galatasaray and manager Okan Buruk managed to collect even more points, cracking the barrier of 100 points with 102 points and only 26 goals conceded.
For Fenerbahçe, this was enough reason to make a big splash this summer.
After firing their head coach, Fener and President Ali Koc were set on making a big move to boost their next campaign.
They wanted to overtake Gala for good this season.
In June 2024, Fener brought in the polarising figure of José Mourinho as their head coach.
Mourinho is one of the most decorated coaches in modern football history.
The eccentric Portuguese is not only known for his manner of dealing with the press but also for winning multiple titles during his stints with FC Porto, Real Madrid, FC Chelsea, and Manchester United.
Looking back at last season, Fenerbahçe lost only one game, and Galatasaray lost only two.
This season, after five matchday, under Okan Buruk’s tactics, Galatasaray is again leading the league with five wins, with Fener already dropping two points.
Fener are in second place with 13 points from five games.
With both teams rarely dropping points, these direct duels will be crucial in deciding the 2024/25 Süper Lig winner.
When both teams face off in Ülker Stadyumu on Saturday, the title could be a motivating factor already in the first couple of games of the season.
In this tactical analysis piece in the form of a tactical preview, we will provide an analysis of what both teams have tried to do so far this season and how they will perform in the most important game in Turkish football so far this term.
Players & Formations
First, we will examine the teams and the formations and players the managers will probably use in the game.
Fenerbahçe Formation Under Jose Mourinho Tactics
After managing to get the big-name head coach he wanted in José Mourinho, Ali Koc went on to use the leverage and pull this move gave him on the transfer market this summer to sign some big names for his team as well, especially after losing Ferdi Kadıoğlu to Brighton after the Euros.
Namely, Fener managed to sign Youssef En-Nesyri from Sevilla, Çağlar Söyüncü from Atletico Madrid and loaned out former Newcastle United standout Allan Saint-Maximin from Saudi side Al-Ahli.
Another big signing was the loan of Morocco international Sofyan Amrabat from AC Florenz, who joined Mourinho’s squad late into the transfer window.
In terms of formations, the Portuguese gaffer had his team lined up in a 4-2-3-1 formation throughout every game of the season so far.
In goal, Croatian international Dominik Livaković has been Fener’s clear-cut number one this season and will also start against Galatasaray.
In defence, considering the injury of right-back Bright Osayi-Samuel, we can expect a back four consisting of Jayden Oosterwolde on the left, Çağlar Söyüncü and Alexander Djiku as the two centre-halves, and Mert Müldür filling in on the right-hand side as he did in the last couple of games.
In midfield, Mourinho will probably keep on easing Amrabat into the team and not instantly start him in the intercontinental derby, so former United midfielder Fred and Ismail Yüksek will most likely form the double pivot, with Sebastian Szymański starting in attacking midfield.
On the wings, Allan Saint-Maximin on the left and experienced Dušan Tadić on the right will form Mourinho’s tandem in attack, with captain Edin Džeko starting as the lone striker up front.
Galatasaray Formation Under Okan Buruk Tactics
Galatasaray have had a very busy transfer window as well.
After losing a couple of role players like Wilfried Zaha in the last week of the transfer window, Kerem Aktürkoğlu also decided to leave the club and join Benfica on a permanent transfer.
Left-back Derrick Köhn left the team after just six months to go back home and signed for Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga.
Gala were also active on the buying side of things, signing multiple players to strengthen the squad.
They signed Gabriel Sara from Norwich for their midfield, highly talented right-back Elias Jelert from FC Copenhagen for their defence, and Michy Batshuayi on a free transfer from Fenerbahçe for their defence.
Late into the transfer window, Gala made a couple of splash signings, signing Ismail Jakobs from AS Monaco as a replacement for Köhn and Rolland Sallai from SC Freiburg as a replacement for Aktürkoğlu.
We have to talk about it here as well; after the fallout of a certain Nigerian striker with his former club, Galatasaray made the biggest signing in Turkish football history by loaning superstar Victor Osimhen from SSC Napoli.
Okan Buruk style of play also uses his 4-2-3-1 formation in this game, starting captain Fernando Muslera in goal.
In the back-four, Ismael Jakobs will come in as the starting left-back, with Davinson Sánchez and Abdülkerim Bardakcı covering the centre of the defence and Kaan Ayhan playing on the right side.
In midfield, former Arsenal player Lucas Torreira and Gabriel Sara will form the double pivot.
Dries Mertens will start as the attacking midfielder, flanked by Yunus Akgün on the left and Barış Alper Yılmaz on the right.
In attack, with Galatasaray star striker Mauro Icardi still struggling with injury, the chances are very good to see the debut of Osimhen for Galatasaray on the biggest stage possible this Saturday.
Fenerbahçe Tactical Observations:
Diamond Press With Aggressive Midfielders
If we are talking about José Mourinho tactics, we have to talk about the year 2004.
The Portuguese manager took over FC Porto in 2002, rebuilding the team and modernising the tactics in the game in the meantime.
In 2004, Porto managed to do the unthinkable and won the UEFA Champions League after beating European giants like Manchester United and Olympique Lyon on the way.
One thing that helped Mourinho and his team win these games was a widely spread formation, but Porto used it differently: the 4-diamond-2.
Why do I bring this up here?
Well, you’ll see.
This picture shows Fener in their press this season, here in a UEFA Champions League qualification match against LOSC.
Their 4-2-3-1 becomes more of a 4-4-2, with Szymański pushing forward as a second striker to help control the opposing team’s two centre-backs and the double pivot controlling the opposing midfielders.
In the end, this ends up in a bit of a man-to-man situation all over the pitch, with even the back-four being in man coverage and having to push forward.
A problem for Fenerbahçe in these situations has been line-breaking passes.
Here, Lille’s attacking midfielder is wide open between the lines.
The space between his defensive line and his midfield has been rather big for Mourinho this season, which has already been exploited a couple of times.
To prevent this from happening, there are two solution.
One, just fall back and cover the space; press forward and prevent the opposing team from playing a controlled ball into the vacated space.
If you followed Mourinho for the past 22 years of his career, you know he’ll choose the second option.
Mourinho‘s men are putting pressure on the build-up very early.
The picture above shows a typical pressing situation for Fener this season.
One of the wingers, this time Dušan Tadić, is coming inside and putting pressure on a centre-back.
Meanwhile, the other winger also comes into the centre but drops into the midfield.
Dries Mertens moves back from second striker to number 10 again, and one Fener midfielder pushes forward while the other drops back, playing as an anchor for the team.
This creates a diamond formation for Fenerbahçe, allowing the team to control the centre of the pitch and forcing the opposing team to play out to their wing while still controlling every player in their man coverage.
While Fener are not great at actually winning the ball high up the field, its press forces many long balls and prevents possession and a controlled build-up through the centre for opposing teams.
A key factor for this to work is the anchor player in midfield.
One of Fener’s midfielders has to step forward to create a diamond and control the opposing holding midfielder.
The other player needs to drop back into the centre of the field into a holding position to cover the depth of the pitch.
This facet of play has worked well for Mourinho since he started his career, but it’s not without risk.
If the first line of the press of Fener is not able to get enough pressure onto the ball and is beaten through the centre, the opportunity for turning moments of the opposing midfielders is tough to defend for the rest of the team.
In the picture above, we can see that the centre-back is able to find his attacking midfielder because one midfielder pushed up the field to the wrong man, which ended up in a counterattack out of possession for Lille.
Another risk is the distance the midfielders have to cover for these tactics to work.
Later in games, Fener struggle to play their press simply because they are facing fitness issues with covering big distances at high speed.
Fenerbahçe In Possession: Keeping It Simple
Looking at Mourinho’s Fenerbahçe side in possession, the team really likes to keep it simple.
Fenerbahçe style of play keeps the passing distances close.
Usually, the team drops back both midfielders close to their centre-backs so that passing distances are short and the defenders can make easy passes around the back even when facing pressure.
In the picture, we can see both parts of the double pivot moving closer to the centre-back with the ball, allowing for an easy line-breaking pass.
From there on, the midfielder has multiple options to continue play.
Overall, the team changes its shape when in possession.
The attacking midfielder drops deep and wide while one of the two central midfielders is pushing to the other side, practically creating a 4-3-3 shape in the build-up.
The full-backs are also staying close to the centre-backs, allowing quick, short passes and pretty much always creating a numbers advantage in the first line of play through their positional play.
This enables Mourinho’s men to open up players that will have room to trigger play for them.
Looking at the picture above, the attacking midfielder dropping into midfield has another purpose as well.
With their movements, Fenerbahçe’s midfielders drag the opposing midfielders out of their positions, opening up space right behind them and in front of their defensive line.
While teams like Brighton under Roberto De Zerbi also like to attract the press to play through it, Fener drag those players out for another purpose.
Edin Džeko, one of the most underrated strikers of the last years in world football, is falling into the space his midfielders created.
The defender with the ball then plays a simple chip into that space, and Džeko, who is an excellent target man, can then proceed with his hold-up play or head the ball onwards towards his near-sided winger.
Fener is playing a lot of chips towards Džeko in the build-up, and there is no question that the Bosnian striker is their key player as a target man up-front.
Tactical Observations: Galatasaray
Using Long Balls To Beat The Press
If we look at Galatasaray tactics in possession, we will actually see many similar trends to Fenerbahçe tactics.
Galatasaray also really like to play with long balls when facing a high press.
It’s even more important for Galatasaray style of play than for Fener because their back four lacks the ability to play precise passes under pressure.
Here, we can see Galatasaray winning the ball deep in their own territory in the Champions League qualifier against Young Boys Bern.
Left-back Derrick Köhn — who is not playing for Gala anymore but to whom Ismail Jakobs is a very similar type of player — does not even look to see if there are any teammates around him who can receive the ball.
He knows that Young Boys will instantly go into their counterpressing, so he just launches the ball upfield.
Just like Edin Džeko, Mauro Icardi drops back deep into his own half to act as a target man, dragging the Young Boys defenders with him.
Here, we can see a difference between Fener and Gala.
While Fener like to drag the opposing player into the press, Gala like to drag the players with their target man and let their midfielders make deep runs to support him.
Here, Icardi is able to lay off the ball with his head to Dries Mertens, who was just waiting for that to happen.
From there on, Mertens plays an easy line-breaking pass towards his right winger, and Gala runs the counterattack through their wings, resulting in a great scoring opportunity, which they failed to convert here.
This plays really into the strength of Galatasaray‘s attackers.
The current Turkish champion’s wingers and full-backs are rapid.
With their pace, it’s really hard for opposing defences to catch up.
Dries Mertens is also rapid and really great at finding solutions in minimal space, which allows him to be the perfect lay-off option for his target man upfront.
For the Galatasaray striker, this means they can receive a lot of crosses from the wing.
Mauro Icardi has thrived in this system because he is still one of the best poachers in European football.
With him getting a lot of involvement in the build-up and play tailored towards his strengths in the final third, Icardi scored 48 goals and assisted 15 more in 61 appearances in the Süper Lig, putting him at an impressive 1.02 goals per 90 minutes.
Icardi won’t be able to play for the game on Saturday, but Galatasaray have a new superstar in its attack: Victor Osimhen.
While Osimhen is not as good a target man as Icardi for receiving long balls, his pace will prove to be a great asset to Gala’s attack.
In recent years, Osimhen has also been a clinical finisher.
While it will be difficult to replace Icardi for Gala, Osimhen obviously has the individual class to easily take over games for Okan Buruk.
With Mourinho targeting Davínson Sanchez back in the Europa League final seven years ago and bragging about it to him while they were both at Spurs, we’d expect nothing less than Mourinho doing it again, which will lead to Gala playing a lot of long balls on Saturday.
Galatasaray Problems With Defending Long Balls
Galatasaray like to play with a high and aggressive press as well.
Unlike Fener, there are not many interesting things about their press.
However, it is a simple, man-oriented attacking press that allows them to put pressure on the opposing team early in the build-up.
Okan Buruk and his men had been suffocating for most Süper Lig teams last season because of their high press and their Gegenpress.
Galatasaray forced many long balls, but it was able to defend them easily and regain possession in these situations.
This season, they have struggled with defending these long balls against better teams with really physical target men.
The Swiss team abused this multiple times in their heartbreaking loss to Young Boys in the Champions League qualifying stage.
The second goal for Young Boys in their home game was a perfect example of this.
Young Boys played with two strikers, Ugrinic and Ganvoula, both are incredibly physical players.
In the situation pictured above, the Young Boys goalkeeper was just launching a goal kick down the field, with Ganvoula dropping into midfield to receive the ball.
Victor Nelsson followed him to contest the aerial duel, which should be fine, especially because last season, Gala loved to win these duels.
The problem lies with the rest of the back four.
Usually, when one centre-back steps up like this, the other three defenders close in on each other, closing the gaps between them and forming a back-three.
Here, the second centre-back got dragged out of his position by Ugrinic; however, he opened up the entirety of space in the defensive centre of the pitch.
Ganvoulas’s rather mediocre header slipped through the centre, and Monteiro was able to make a run from the right wing towards the centre because Köhn was scrambling around, trying to close the vacated space.
This led to an easy finish for the Swiss champion.
Considering Fener loves to play chipped balls towards their target man, Gala will need to improve this part of their press immensely.
Even if they manage to get pressure on the build-up, it won’t matter if they defend the resulting long ball like this.
Conclusion
The intercontinental derby is always one of the highlights of the season for every football fan.
Two great teams contending for the championship face off, with two of the most emotionally invested fanbases in the world clashing as well.
This year, we are going to witness the first derby of José Mourinho and Victor Osimhen, two big names joining different sides of the Bosporus this summer.
What’s going to be interesting as well is the fact that both teams are rather similar in their style of play.
Both teams love to press high and have an aggressive approach with their press and counterpress.
Both teams love to play long balls in the build-up and try to find their target men for lay-offs and link-up-play early in possession.
Both teams are playing with the same formation, which will cause many clashes and duels throughout the pitch.
We are going to witness the game of the two clear-cut favourites to win it all in the Süper Lig this season.
Given how rarely these teams drop points, the victor will already be the favourite to win it all on matchday 6.
It’s going to be a close game with a lot of the line in a crazy atmosphere; what more can a football enthusiast want from a game?
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