THE FILM ROOM: COPA 90 STORIES' "ONCE IN A LIFETIME - TRABZONSPOR"
New Documentary from Indie Filmmaker Eli Mengem Dives Deep into the Murky World of Turkish Football, Delivers Knockout Emotional Punch in Chronicle of Trabzonspor's unlikely 2021 Süper Lig Victory
In the cold and unfeeling corporate world of modern sport, especially in the techno-rational constellation of American professional sports, new clubs and franchises do not just spring into being and experience success ex nihilo. The calculations that are performed by armies of the club’s hired technocrats prior to a ball ever being kicked are specifically engineered to produce a triangulation of the most fiscally advantageous entry placement in the market for the burgeoning enterprise- the same as any business seeking to find marginal gains to outperform expected returns. Attaining loyal local support is often factored in as a matter of course, but in the current TV-money and cryptocurrency-sponsorship drenched climate of global professional football, the actual support in the city or town that the club calls home has become not so much the aim of the club’s existence as it is a bonus. It is rare to see any up-and-coming club not funded by Red Bull or Ryan Reynolds finding their footing among the traditional big boys of world football.
Rarer still are the historically independent clubs that have found no real global expansion in the post-cable TV era that can somehow sustain championship-level performance, ensure top-flight stability, and maintain shrewd management on and off the pitch. That is why the incredible tale of the rise, fall, and rise again of the Karadeniz Fırtınası (the “Black Sea Storm”), the turbulent majesty of Turkish upstarts Trabzonspor, is such a fascinating anomaly among the drumming thud of an increasingly stratified global football hegemony perpetuated by and for the so-called “super clubs”.
Essentially now relegated to existence as a small dot on a map of the Caucasus, Trabzon is only the 30th largest city in Turkey, but the currently insignificant stature of the city has not always been the case for this outpost on the Black Sea. The area was for centuries a melting pot of culture and ethnicity as an ancient waypoint along the great Silk Road, a status that saw the city become a vitally important seaport for centuries following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the cooling of crusading tensions between the Muslims and Christians. Many scholars and scientists from all creeds and castes found their way to the port and remained in the city to freely practice their arts unhindered, and none other than the legendary Ottoman ruler Suleiman The Magnificent was born in what was then known as Trebizond.
The coming and going of the rule of the Ottomans found Trabzon undulating with the economic and societal struggles of the “sick man of Europe”, the opening of the Suez Canal significantly decreasing the city’s importance as a node along the East-West trade route, while its multi-cultural cosmopolitanism allowed Trabzon to become a main point of entry into Turkey for many modernizing 18th and 19th century Western innovations and ideas. During the years of the World Wars, the region was caught up in much of the fighting that took place around the Black Sea, and as a result its two main exports, tobacco and hazelnuts, were completely foundered and made obsolete by years of neglect, devastation, and blockade, bringing a post-war economic malaise to the city that saw its standard of living fall precipitously.
It was in this declining post-war period that what was to become the city’s lodestar, its savior and provider of its saints, its lifeline to a globalizing world that had left it far behind, Trabzonspor Kulübü (or “Sporting Club Trabzon” to style it in the traditional European manner) was birthed in 1967 by way of merger of Trabzon’s small local teams to create a truly unified city club that could compete with what up until then had been the total stranglehold of Istanbul’s “Big Three” (Galatasaray, Besiktas, and Fenerbahçe) on Turkish football.
What followed was nearly two decades of unprecedented domestic dominance, smashing the Istanbul hegemons to a thousand pieces with a team of local Trabzon lads, making fools out of some of the sport’s biggest clubs in the European Cup like Barcelona, Inter Milan, and Liverpool, ultimately becoming one of Turkey’s most successful clubs by the waning of Trabzonspor’s last halcyon days in the late 80’s. A period of decline inevitably came on the heels of such an insanely high watermark, finding the club in the wilderness at the turn of the century, galling insult turning to devastating injury when their “comeback” championship run in 2011 fell short at the finish line to Fenerbahçe- who subsequently were forced to vacate their title win because of an audacious match-fixing scandal that rocked Turkish football and from which the country’s footballing image has still not fully recovered.
But that is not by any means the end of the story (or an exhaustive one, for an expansive history of Turkish football check out the excellent John McManus book Welcome to Hell?: In Search of the Real Turkish Football), as in 2021 the 38-year wait the Trabzon faithful patiently endured finally came to a glorious end, as the team outpaced and outgunned the rest of the field to win their first Süper Lig title of the new millennium. Fortunately for posterity, documentary filmmaker Eli Mengem was sent by YouTube football powerhouses Copa 90 to cover the week or so leading up to the wonderous moment of final victory for Trabzonspor, interviewing local politicians, journalists, and supporters to expand and color the story of one of football’s greatest underdogs.
As a film, the documentary tries to fit an almost overwhelming amount of context into its snappy 40 minute runtime, attempting to give the casual viewer a deep sense of the mystical social-emotional-economic connection that the people of Trabzon have to their football team by weaving together the narrative of the current title win and the club’s past set against the background of the modern Turkish politico-social climate. Managing to both delve into this labyrinthian backstory as well as to highlight the uniqueness of the present moment, the documentary is a nuanced portrait of a city on the brink of a long-awaited release of painful ecstasy, an explosive nervous joy that can only come from complete devotion to a messianic-like cause.
Mengem centers himself in the film (as he has in his past work) as its narrator, interviewer, and the viewer’s avatar for the “once in a lifetime” experience of being able to visit these idiosyncratic football clubs. In other hands, the disparate nature of these roles would place too much stress on the performance of one person, but Mengem’s disarming affability and gentle persuasiveness facilitates genuine conversation and reaction whatever the situation. Whether in a gruff but vindicated old journalist’s office hearing of the sorrowful tribulations of the city or at the heart of the title-winning match itself, it is Mengem’s passionate force of personality that carries off the interweaving of both the historical narrative and the ambitious variance of places and people he encounters.
There is a stark but beautiful grimness to the Black Sea landscape of Trabzon, a place where a drizzling rain falls incessantly from low-hung gloom clouds most of the year, and the photographers (one of whom is also Mengem) made an excellent artistic choice to include many “establishing” shots of the gothic pallor that blankets the city, giving the film a pastel-like character that reveals the flavor of life there. This provides a thought-provoking contrast to the vivacious energy and sardonic humor of the residents, for whom the Karadeniz Fırtınası ignites and stokes the flames of passion that keep the social and cultural lifeblood of the city flowing.
“Have you ever seen a city so together? Men, women, older, younger, several generations all together- have you ever seen a synergy like this?” asks one of his interviewees, and the film demonstrates this point with blazing clarity- truly, if ever a city was defined by its support of its local football club, Trabzon can claim to be chief among the most fanatical and loyal fanbases of all time. The final scenes of the emotionally drained supporters jubilantly wandering in aimless tearful reverie around the pitch, clawing up bits of grass as souvenirs, embracing and kissing strangers and friends alike, hanging from the goalposts and chanting their songs of love, are a fitting testament to the endurance of these brave people- not just of the 38-year wait for another “real” title, but also of the injustice of knowing they are forgotten on purpose, the annoying little city of firebrands far from the high-society hub of Istanbul, economically unimportant and culturally irrelevant. They both refuse to “know their place” and have the “audacity” to defy the traditional hierarchy that presents itself as inevitable.
The only shame is the short runtime, as it would have been worth extending the film’s length (as well as giving Mengem a much longer period than a single week over which to document his experiences) to more fully go into the nuts and bolts of why Trabzon itself creates this environment where such a small football club can prosper and attain such lofty heights. This is an understandable constraint though, considering that Copa 90 and Eli are almost certainly working on a shoestring budget, and credit only a single fixer (a local “in country” who sets up meetings and translates) for coordinating the entire duration of the shoot.
Altogether, the film is another excellent piece of investigative journalism and storytelling from emerging directorial talent Eli Mengem, and The Foul Throw looks forward to enjoying the third part in his “Once In A Lifetime” series (the first film being about Real Betis of Spain and is an wonderful film itself, the final part of the trilogy to come featuring SC Freiburg of Germany) and hopes work like this documentary will become more common in football journalism, revealing the wonderous underbelly of world football for the global fan.
WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY FREE ON YOUTUBE:
-J.W. Parker