By Chris Wright
With the game having already been temporarily halted twice beforehand due to crowd trouble, Monday evening’s Turkish Super Lig tie between Trabzonspor and Fenerbahce was abadoned entirely before half-time after several players where pelted with objects including flares, bottles, coins and stones.
The game was initially stopped on the 28-minute mark to allow police to deal with crowd violence and a pitch invader, then again several minutes after play restarted, before the referee eventually decided to throw out the fixture entirely at the end of the 10 minutes of stoppage time he added on at the end of the first half.
The problems appeared to begin when league leaders Fenerbache went 1-0 up, with their players and staff then being bombarded with missiles thrown from the home supporters. Indeed, a photo of Fener goalkeeper Volkan Demirel’s shirt circulated after the game, showing a burn hole straight through his jersey where a flare had supposedly hit him.
Speaking of Volkan, he also pulled off a neat little magic trick during the uproar – with a quick vanishing act helping him evade an inbound flare…
Anyway, according to BBC Sport, not content with ruining the game, fans of both clubs then continued to clash with police in the streets following the dissolution of the match.
Hostilities between the two sides began back at the culmination of the 2010/11 Super Lig title race, when Fener put together a late run of form and overturned a significant points deficiency to steal the Championship away from Trabzonspor on goal difference.
However, the title victory was then the subject of a high-profile match-fixing investigation that eventually saw Fener president Aziz Yildirim sent to prison.