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Date Posted: 23:41:58 01/27/03 Mon
Author: TeoRay
Subject: The Times


A BUNCH OF GIGGLING JAPANESE GIRLS bob up and down excitedly in front of the television camera, blowing kisses and shouting “Ilhan . . . love . . .”
The object of their adulation is nowhere to be seen — Ilhan Mansiz, the Turkey striker, is probably busy training for a match for his club, Besiktas, and has no idea who these girls are who all want to marry him. Yet they have paid thousands of pounds to travel to Turkey on the off-chance of meeting the man they learnt to adore during Turkey’s World Cup adventure in Japan and South Korea.

The Japanese home crowd (the girls, anyway) took to him to such an extent that they cheered him even though Turkey beat Japan in the second round. When he scored a golden goal against Senegal to take Turkey into their first World Cup semi-final, his status as hero was confirmed. English girls will be able to assess his appeal when Turkey travel to England to play a European Championship qualifying match on April 2. Turkey are the seeds of group seven and Mansiz is expected to spearhead their challenge against a team who have twice beaten them 8-0.

After his return to Turkey, newspapers were full of don’t-kiss-and-tell stories by models chasing Mansiz, including one who apparently sent him a text message saying “anything for five minutes with you”. The mere association helped to boost their careers. Websites set up in his name were full of love messages. A gay poet has written about his “eyes like oysters” and this month, Turkish Elle magazine chose him as one of the sexiest men in the land.

One of Turkey’s best players and indisputably the best-looking, Mansiz is in demand and, to read the press, he is having a ball. But in the flesh, the man the Turkish media would have us believe is a rampant sex god and a nightclubbing wild child is actually shy . . . not to say a little standoffish.

Not surprisingly, after the media peddled half-truths about his alleged partying and professional conduct and then staged a protest when he lashed out at them, he rarely gives interviews and clearly sees reporters as “The Enemy”. Trying not to take it personally, The Times asks him how many reports about him are true.

“Oh, about 10 per cent,” he says, before reconsidering. “Hmm, maybe that’s too generous. They distort, they exaggerate. I’m shown to be a person I’m not.”

His normally soft voice is shot with anger when he talks about the models who used his name to get in the gossip columns. Later he explains how his shy disposition and mistrustfulness made it difficult for him to make friends in Turkey, which, as a German-born son of Turkish migrants, is essentially a foreign country to him.

Watching him in his flat in Asian Istanbul, it is easy to see why the Japanese feel affinity with Mansiz. Forget his stature and sportsman’s gait; with almond-shaped eyes, trendy cropped hair with reddish highlights and low-slung Moschino jeans, in civvies he looks more like a Japanese fashion student than last year’s most prolific Turkey striker.

He laughs when asked about the Japanese: “I met some who came on tours. I’m astonished — they come all the way from Japan to see a footballer. I really must have an important place in their hearts.” He looks mystified.

No Besiktas match goes by without at least a handful of ecstatic Japanese fans present. Women’s magazines there have featured him and a Turkish fashion designer has persuaded him to work on a joint project aimed at Japan.

With all the furore surrounding Mansiz it is easy to forget that he is actually an extremely good player — one of the best to emerge from his country. Even when playing badly, he stands out on the pitch for his energy and presence. When playing well, it is as if he is in slow motion when calmly lining up to score while others panic around him. Constantly hustling when not on the ball, he is rarely out of position when he gets a pass. And he visibly enjoys the game.

Fast, strong and fit as he is, Mansiz, at 27, is no footballing youngster. What took him so long to reach such heights? He smiles wryly: “I guess I waited for the World Cup.”

But those close to him speak about his lack of political guile, his “outsider” status and his determination to speak his own mind at the risk of offending the bigwigs in Turkey’s rigid, hierarchical football world. He was reluctantly pushed into that world at the age of 22, when he gave up a career in the game in Germany and returned to Turkey at his parents’ insistence.

A brief stint with Genclerbirligi, the first division Ankara club, ended in tears after he failed to fit in. “I gave up football completely for six months. Particularly at that age I was very obstinate and I did things my own way, even if it turned out to be harmful to me,” he said.

He may be Turkey’s World Cup hero, but he spent most of the finals on the bench, passed over in favour of Hakan Sükür, the out-of-form but popular striker. This surprised observers (a British commentator suggested that Sükür must be married to the President’s daughter) and infuriated fans. Mansiz is diplomatic, but it’s clear the experience wasn’t a lot of fun.

“To be honest we had some pretty difficult days,” he says. “Long training camps are painful. But back home we realised it was a great experience — that the time I spent there wasn’t that bad.”

After the Genclerbirligi debacle, Mansiz decided it was too early to give up and signed for Kusadasispor — an Aegean tourist trap whose second division team was making a brief foray into the serious side of the game. My father, who was on the town council, went to Germany to check out this “young German worker guy with long hair”.

Mansiz was soon nicknamed “Ayse” because, with his hair, dress sense and pretty face, he was deemed to look like a girl.

“I had problems settling in (in Turkey)” he admits. “There were lifestyle and cultural differences. If you behave like you did (in Germany) people treat you like someone from outer space . . . I had an earring and everybody said ‘how can a footballer wear an earring?’ Later it became the fashion.”

As his five-month-old labrador puppy trots across the room, gleefully parading a shoe he has managed to steal, Mansiz jumps up and intercepts, telling the dog off in fluent German and handing him over to his equally striking German girlfriend. Mansiz is much more comfortable in the language of the people among whom he has spent most of his life.

Having shone at Kusadasispor, Mansiz signed with Samsunspor, of the first division, and then Besiktas — one of the big three Istanbul clubs. Immediately he became top scorer in the league. Then came the World Cup.

But, over the summer, disaster struck again. A knee operation put him out of action. He sought a second opinion in Germany and had two more operations. This sparked a row with Senol Gunes, the Turkey coach, who reported him to the disciplinary board for not going first to the national training camp for a friendly against Georgia. Mansiz faced exclusion from the national team for up to a year but in the end went unpunished. Gunes picked him as soon as he was fit again, but the bad blood must remain.

As he struggled to return to form after injury, his aggression on the pitch sometimes got the better of him and, after a batch of yellow cards, he was sent off during a Uefa Cup second-round tie against Alavés, having scored the winning goal. He received a three-match ban.

However, it seems that nothing keeps Mansiz down for long. With Besiktas top of the league with a game in hand and still in the Uefa Cup, he is busy planning world domination — something he hopes will include a stint in one of Europe’s leading leagues.

He reels off the top teams: “Bayern Munich in Germany, Barcelona or Real Madrid in Spain, Manchester United”, or something in Italy. He didn’t get this far by keeping a lid on his ambitions.

He’ll be nearly 30 when his present contract runs out — isn’t he racing against time? “Not at all,” he says. “I play a very physical game. As long as I make sure I’m fit I reckon I can play until 35. There’s plenty of time.”



The Times,Monday 27.01.03

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