Senol Gunes has admitted to feelings of exhaustion lately. The veteran manager of the Turkish champions, Besiktas, has patrolled his technical area with emotions see-sawing through a series of taut draws in recent weeks, the latest the weekend’s stalemate with Istanbul rivals Fenerbahce, following close on the heels of the 1-1 with league leaders Basaksehir.
“It makes me tired just watching,” said Gunes, 64. His adrenaline has been racing ever since the extraordinary point his club gained in their last outing in the Uefa Champions League. They were 3-0 down at home to Benfica after just over a half-hour. With just over half-hour remaining, they began a thrilling comeback and made it 3-3 with a minute of ordinary time remaining.
The effect has been to leave Group B of the competition, where almost every point has been eked out with maximum endeavour, the most delicately poised of all the eight mini-leagues going into the last matchday of the opening phase. Gunes has urged his sapped players – “the schedule has been very demanding for them,” he concedes – to remember their obligation to make that rousing recovery against Benfica count towards progress.
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Besiktas can guarantee a place in the last 16 with a win on Tuesday at a Dynamo Kiev who are already marooned at the foot of Group B. Even another draw, which would be their fifth in their six European matches, might be enough if Napoli win against Benfica in Lisbon. Besiktas currently sit a point behind those two clubs, but the Turkish club’s head-to-head record is advantageous.
The tournament would certainly have a more diverse look if Besiktas can find a way through. Right now, the candidates in pole position to make up the last 16 – 12 are already there – are drawn from only six countries, the usual heavyweights. Last season, the knockout phase featured with clubs from 10 different leagues.
Gunes has always been a formidable ambassador for the ambition of Turkish football. He was the manager when the national team finished third at the 2002 World Cup, and if he guides Besiktas successfully through a night that may well involve his regularly, anxiously pirouetting around to his support staff for updates on how the match in Lisbon is going, he will have taken the club to a significant landmark. They have never come through the group phase in the modern format of the Champions League, and it is 30 years since Besiktas reached a quarter-final in the European Cup, their furthest reach, although in those days the tournament was more compact.
In those days, the mid-1980s, Dynamo Kiev were stronger, too. They beat the Turkish side 7-0 on aggregate to make the semis.
Gunes’s version are a good deal less brittle, and, as evidenced against Benfica, belligerent in the face of setback. They are unbeaten in the domestic Super Lig, where they sit on the shoulder of the leaders Basaksehir, and in the Champions League, where the summer arrivals of seasoned professionals such as Adriano, signed from Barcelona, and Gokhan Inler, the Swiss-Turkish midfielder, formerly of Napoli, have added a certain savvy to their game.
They have panache up front, and if Besiktas do make history for the club on Tuesday, Cenk Tosun’s spectacular, acrobatic, volleyed goal against Benfica will become an emblem for their journey. Gunes has also coaxed a level of sustained performance out of the enigmatic Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma, late of Al Ahli, that many of his several former coaches could not. The 33-year-old Portuguese, with three assists and three goals so far in this Champions League campaign, has been key to putting Besiktas on the brink of the next round.
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