The opening match of the Super League has an interesting coincidence! Trabzonspor, the defending champion of the league, and Istanbulspor, a newcomer to the Super League, faced each other in the opening match of the 2022-2023 Super League season.
I expected it to be quite exciting to watch the best of the last season in the league against a new team in the league. The fact that it was the first match of the season made me think that it might be open to surprises, and when we look at the past statistics, it was usual for the favourites to have difficulties in the first matches.
Starting 11s
Istanbulspor
D. Jensen-Oğuzhan-M. Yeşil-O. Erdoğan-D. Aksu-A. Yaşar-K. Abazaj-M. Kabasakal-Ferhat-J. Topalli-İbrahim
Trabzonspor
Uğurcan-E. Elmalı-Vitor Hugo-Dorukhan-J. Larsen-E. Siopis-Trezeguet-A. Bakasetas-A. Ömür-E. Visca-A. Cornelius
Although all eyes were on Trabzonspor, the defending champion, Istanbulspor, the newly promoted team in the league, was also being watched with curiosity. I watched the match at home with a close friend of mine from Trabzon. While he was supporting his favourite team, I was more interested in the eye-catching beauty of football.
The first half witnessed a controlled game between the teams, with Trabzonspor having the ball and constantly aiming to take the scoring advantage. Trabzonspor attacked more and in the 16th minute they scored the goal they wanted with their goal scorer and managed to turn the score 1 - 0 in favour of Trabzonspor. A. Cornelius' header took its place in the statistics as the first goal of the 2022 - 2023 Super Lig (Turkey) season.
The game on the pitch got a bit less exciting and my friend and I started chatting while drinking tea and watching the screen out of the corner of our eyes. The game was not what we expected, Trabzon was the superior side both in the game on the pitch and in the score. Istanbulspor didn't seem to be aware of the difficulty of the league they had just won promotion to.
At half time I told my friend about hive. I showed him my account here and gave him information about hive. I made suggestions about joining hive and what he could do here, but I don't know what the result will be. He is a complete twitter nut and he kept tweeting about the score throughout the match.
When the second half started, we took our seats in front of the screen. Our expectation was that Istanbulspor would put an end to their poor play in the first half and be more aggressive in terms of the game with the effect of being defeated in the score. More precisely, this was my expectation, my friend believed that Trabzonspor would win differently.
Compared to the first half, Istanbulspor attacked more. Trabzonspor's retreat to defence due to the advantage of the score may also have an effect on this. Although they created a few positions in the centre from the right and left, they couldn't get past Trabzonspor goalkeeper Uğurcan. I think Uğurcan is the best goalkeeper Turkey has produced in recent times and he adds a lot of value to Trabzonspor.
We are experiencing the hottest days of summer in Turkey. This has a very negative effect on the game and the players on the pitch. Arda Kardeşler, who officiated the match, gave "water breaks" in both halves so that the players could get back the water they had lost.
Even we were sweating in our seats while watching the match.
Just when we thought that the match had turned into a midfield struggle and that it would end like this, S. Denswil scored with a clean header at the 86th minute from the corner kick and Trabzonspor, the defending champions, took the lead to 2 - 0. Thus, an interesting statistic emerged in the match because the first goal was scored with a header from a corner kick.
Trabzonspor seems to have increased its strength by making new transfers on top of its good squad. It seems that the last champion will be one of the favourites in the new season.
The match was played at Istanbul Olympic Stadium and the referee Arda Kardeşler was quite successful. I don't think he made any mistakes that could have affected the score. In fact, the players of both teams had good intentions and didn't show any behaviour against the spirit of fair play that could sabotage the game or the referee in any way.
As a result, the defending champion defeated his new opponent 2 - 0 and got his first 3 points.
