Fatih Terim’s biggest challenge has arrived

Just a week ago, before the big derby between Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe, I wrote that the game will be a clash of two different philosophies. That clash ended in a draw, but given Galatasaray’s form and squad advantage, Fenerbahçe manager Erol Bulut could be considered the winner of the tactical battle. He managed to cripple Galatasaray’s build-up from the beginning by pressing Marcao and Taylan Antalyalı, which resulted in unreliable Christian Luyindama making the first passes. By doing so, Bulut showed the other teams how to take advantage of this weakness to stop Galatasaray’s talented forward line from moving forward.

Rangers manager Steven Gerrard was quick to learn from this occasion and implemented pretty much the same plan as Bulut. Rangers are a fast, strong, simple team that professionalizes in disrupting its opponent’s game and counterattack. In this way, it doesn’t sound like much of a threat for Galatasaray, as Terim’s team has a decent possession game with many talented players. In theory, Galatasaray could have possessed the ball more and circulated it in a more effective way, as it had the right amount of talented players to do so.

However, the Achilles’ heel of this strategy turned out to be extremely fatal. When Galatasaray is unable to bring the ball to the front through the partnership of Marcao and Taylan Antalyalı, they become a below-mediocre team that struggles to get the ball out of their half. Rangers and Gerrard knew this and pressed very strategically. Knowing that Galatasaray lacked Marcelo Saracchi and Arda Turan on the left-wing, they blocked the right side and forced Galatasaray to play from the left side. With Ryan Babel and Martin Linnes performing badly as Rangers expected, Rangers achieved the defensive part of their goals.

The second phase was to send deep, long balls into Galatasaray’s penalty box, utilizing the high-quality deliveries of legendary Galatasaray player Gheorghe Hagi’s son Ianis Hagi. The Colombian striker Alfredo Morelos made dangerous runs behind Galatasaray’s defense and threw Terim’s team out of balance. Gerrard was successful in creating chaos near Galatasaray’s penalty box, and he got his award with two goals in quick succession in the second half. Especially the second goal was a defensive disaster for Galatasaray, as it was a very slow and obvious attack by Rangers.

Now the question is, how can Terim solve this problem to become champions this season in the Süper Lig? He needs to come up with alternative ways of building his game from the defense and relieve the pressure on Marcao and Antalyalı. One way of doing so is to make Younnes Belhanda another center of this build-up structure. Right now Belhanda’s primary role is to deliver good balls inside the opponent’s half, rather than starting the attacks in Galatasaray’s half. Alternatively, Terim might try different formations with a three-man or five-man defense, to increase the passing options. Regardless of his solution, this is the biggest problem that awaits Galatasaray’s next games.