Trabzonspor and Drogheda United: Thirteen Years, One Friendly, and the Gaps Behind the Glow

There is one small detail I noted in my notebook while watching the live broadcast on A Spor: before kick-off, the camera swept across the Trabzonspor bench and paused on two empty seats. They were not the seats of substitutes waiting to come on. They were the seats Okay Yokuşlu and Ruslan Malinovskyi would have occupied had they been fit. Both were absent. And in the matchday squad list, another number made me stop longer than the scoreline did: twelve Trabzonspor internationals were unable to play in this friendly.

It is the kind of detail cameras usually ignore, but to me it says more than any passage of play. A pre-season friendly is normally treated as a training session. But those twelve absent names tell a different story — about squad depth, about the international calendar, and about what remains behind the glow of a match framed as a celebration of brotherhood. I stayed seated for another thirty minutes after the final whistle, rereading my notes and the stats sheet, exactly as I have trained myself to do for years: emotion sets the question, data supplies the answer. And the answer here is more complicated than the way Turkish media chose to tell this story.

Context: a friendly carrying thirteen years

To understand why this match drew so much attention, we need to go back thirteen years. In 2026, Trabzonspor and Drogheda United planned to meet in a symbolic friendly. The match was cancelled due to heavy rain. Since then, the story of the two clubs sat unfinished in a drawer, waiting for a day to be completed. Thirteen years later, that day arrived.

But what gives the match its weight is not football. It lies in a historical thread very few Vietnamese fans know about. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the Great Famine devastated Ireland, the Ottoman Empire sent humanitarian aid to the island. The city of Drogheda was one of the places that aid reached. Generations later, that memory is still preserved, and it became the foundation for an unusual relationship between a small Irish town and a port city on Turkey's Black Sea coast.

The two clubs even share the same shirt colours, and both crests feature a crescent and a star. For Trabzonspor supporters, that is a detail repeated again and again as proof of a brotherhood that crosses borders. For me, rereading the material about the match, what stands out more is the way a sporting event was constructed to carry a historical story. The friendly became the pretext for retelling a little-known chapter of Ottoman–Irish relations.

In purely football terms, this was a meeting between two football cultures at very different levels. Trabzonspor is one of the biggest forces in Turkish football, a multiple Süper Lig champion known by the nickname Fırtına — the Storm. They represent the Black Sea region, a force outside the capital, positioning themselves as the alternative to the dominance of the Istanbul trio of Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş. Drogheda United come from the League of Ireland, a competition with far more modest resources and competitiveness. A friendly between two such clubs, professionally speaking, carries almost no ranking value.

That is precisely why, when the match was broadcast live on A Spor — a free-to-air sports channel — I understood that the organisers were not expecting pay-per-view revenue. Its value lay elsewhere: presence, image, and a story to tell. That is the point I want to hold onto before moving into the squad analysis.

Core: twelve absent names and the squad-depth problem

Back to the squad list. Twelve internationals unable to play is not a small number for any club. In the context of the international calendar, players joining their national teams is normal. But when a club has to play a friendly exactly in this window, what it loses is not only personnel — it is an entire tactical session at close to competitive intensity.

I have witnessed a similar scene in my role as a contributor to a V-League club. In pre-season sessions, when the key men were still away with the national team, the club was left with a group of young players and a few fringe names. At such times, the value of the session lay not in the result, but in the chance for the coach to see faces he would not dare throw into a competitive match. The friendly against Drogheda United therefore carried two layers of meaning stacked on top of each other: a media event, and an improvised squad inspection.

Tactically, a match like this will almost certainly not be played at high tempo. With twelve internationals missing, the coach is forced to blend non-international first-teamers with academy products from the U19 and U21 age groups. That leads to two consequences. First, high-intensity combination drills — high pressing, fast transitions — are hard to carry out fully, because the groups of players have never played together. Second, the focus of the session tilts towards set pieces: corners, free kicks, and organising the defence against long balls.

This is where I want to state a professional view of mine clearly. Possession percentage is the most deceptive statistic in modern football. A team can hold sixty percent of the ball without creating any genuinely meaningful chance, if most of those passes are sideways, safe, and fail to break the opponent's structure. In a depleted friendly like this, the possession figure becomes even more meaningless. What matters is the quality of the three-man combinations, and the cohesion between the lines in the final twenty metres.

Watching the match, I noticed how Trabzonspor organised in possession. The home side deliberately kept the ball in their own half more than usual, stretching the Drogheda shape, then looked to move the ball out wide. It was an energy-saving approach, suited to a training session rather than a match that needs a result. There were no signs of sustained pressure. No fierce duels in midfield. Essentially, this was a match both sides played with preservation in mind.

This raises a question about the usefulness of the friendly for the upcoming Süper Lig season. For a club targeting the upper reaches of the table, missing its most important players during the preparation phase is a real risk. Not a risk to the friendly result, but a risk to physical readiness and tactical cohesion when the season begins. A session missing twelve internationals cannot replace a full-strength session.

I think of two specific names. Okay Yokuşlu, the defensive midfielder who has worn the Turkish national shirt, is the type of player whose role lies in details that never show on the stats sheet: shielding the back line, reading situations, breaking up the opponent's rhythm. Ruslan Malinovskyi, the Ukrainian attacking star, is the one who creates difference in the final third — long shots, line-breaking passes. The simultaneous absence of both strips Trabzonspor of both its shield and its spearhead. And in the list, both are recorded as dealing with fitness issues.

When a club depends on a small group of non-international players for its goal threat, that is a sign of an attack not yet deep enough. This friendly inadvertently exposed that. Not through a statement, but through the emptiness on the bench.

Contrarian angle: when the brotherhood story hides a real problem

Turkish media, and the Irish side too, chose to tell this story in the language of brotherhood and hospitality. The remarks of Mahmut Ören, a Trabzonspor board representative, revolved around exactly those keywords: hospitality, loyalty, and the value the club places on brotherhood. That is a perfectly reasonable communications strategy for a symbolic friendly.

But precisely because that story is so beautiful, it tends to obscure what is really happening inside the club. When all attention pours towards thirteen years of waiting and the Ottoman–Irish historical thread, the squad-depth problem, the injury status of key men, and readiness for the new season are pushed to the margins. A friendly with no ranking value is, in fact, a rare occasion to see the problems that results never reveal.

This is where I want to pose a counter-question. If this match had taken place mid-season, at full strength, would it still have been talked about so much? The answer is almost certainly no. Its appeal comes from absence — the absence of a match that was cancelled, the absence of stars, the absence of competitiveness. An event defined by what it does not have.

And here is the point I want to make as a long-time observer: friendlies like this are usually remembered for the wrong reasons. People remember the thirteen years, the brotherhood, the image of two clubs in the same colours. Very few remember that the club entered the most important phase of its season with a depleted midfield and an attack dependent on unproven names. The friendly passed in applause. But the mark it leaves on the league table may appear on some August day, when points start to count.

I am not dismissing the value of the brotherhood story. I am only arguing that, in this profession, people tend to confuse a successful media event with a successful preparation session. The two are not the same. A match broadcast on a free channel, drawing public attention through a historical story, is a branding victory. But it says nothing about whether the club's defence is ready for the opening rounds.

In this respect, I see Trabzonspor walking a fairly distinct path from the Istanbul trio. While the big capital clubs build their brand on financial power and global reach, Trabzonspor builds its identity on local story and unique cultural links. The Storm nickname, the Black Sea port city, the spirit of resistance to the centre — all of it forms an identity that cannot be copied. The relationship with Drogheda United, underpinned by the Ottoman–Irish story, is part of that identity.

The interesting thing is that this identity is both a strength and a shield. It gives the club a special place in fans' hearts, but it also makes it easy to overlook purely professional issues. When the story is too beautiful, people are reluctant to ask hard questions. That is the blind spot I want to point out, gently, the way I always do when I leave the stadium and sit down to reread my notes.

What to watch next

After the match, there are three signals I will keep an eye on in the coming weeks. The first is the fitness status of Okay Yokuşlu and Malinovskyi. For a club with high ambitions in the Süper Lig, the return of these two players matters far more than the result of any friendly. If they remain absent when the season starts, that will be a more worrying signal.

The second is how the coach rotates the squad when the twelve internationals return. Pairing the young players who featured in the friendly with the returning key men will show whether the club truly has depth, or is merely improvising through a difficult phase.

The third, and perhaps most notable for a sideline observer like me, is how this brotherhood story is sustained. Will it end after a week, as most friendly events do, or will it become a permanent part of the club's identity? If the latter, Trabzonspor has gained a brand asset no Turkish club can replicate.

Football is sometimes decided by things that never happen on the pitch. A friendly cancelled by rain, completed thirteen years later under a different sky, between two clubs sharing the same colours and the same star — that is material no stats sheet can record. But precisely for that reason, it makes people forget that behind the applause, some seats on the bench remain empty, waiting for those who cannot yet return. And the season, as always, will not wait for anyone.