Turkish Soccer Fans Took Relegation Pretty Well AKA They Tried To Burn Down Their Own Stadium

AS- Safe to say some soccer fans take their fandom to more extreme lengths than others. Fans of Turkish squad Eskisehirspor proved as much Sunday when their team fell 2-1 to rival Medipol Basaksehir. The game was a significant one and the result amounted to Eskisehirspor being relegated to a lower division in their final game of the season. But the hometown fans in Eski?ehir, Turkey, went to the extreme, setting fires in the stands and on the field. Mind you, this was at their home Eskisehir Ataturk Stadium.

Example #1,567,865 that European soccer fans simply care more about soccer than any of us on the other side of the pond care about anything. There’s almost nothing they won’t do after a loss. They’ll attack a referee, they’ll kill a referee, they’ll attack each other, they’ll kill each other, they’ll get tear gassed by SWAT and apparently they’ll even burn down their own goddamn stadium. That’s a key fact in this story. These fans didn’t burn down a stadium on the road. That might make some sense. Nope. They burned down their home stadium after relegation. What’s the worst thing you’ve done after your favorite professional sports team lost? Thrown the remote? Maybe kicked in the TV? Even those seem like extreme examples but over there those seem like mild examples. TVs are probably getting kicked in after exhibition losses. But you gotta save the stadium fires and ref killings for relegation. We’re living in a society after all.

PS- I guess that Turkish team is getting a new stadium next year? That obviously changes things but not enough to the point where arson is an okay thing. “Well we’re getting an new stadium next year so I guess we’ll just burn down this one cause we’re angry” isn’t a real world thought. Europeans, man. Different breed of fan over there.