Beşiktaş Are Out of Excuses: This Team's Identity Will Be Decided in the Box

There were two ceremonies at the Tüpraş Stadium on Sunday night. One was official: Necip Uysal, who never wore another club's shirt in his life, walked out with his wife and children and retired. The other was unofficial: onto the same pitch, a few minutes later, came Leandro Trossard from Arsenal, making his Süper Lig debut in black and white. Same grass, same ninety minutes, two different Beşiktaş sides.

That night the Kartal beat Eyüpspor 1-0 through Václav Černý's 25th-minute goal and opened the league season with three points. They have now won all five competitive matches this season, scored six goals and still not conceded one. The numbers are flawless. And yet nobody left the stands wearing a celebration on their face — which, to my mind, is a mark of respect owed to the football intelligence of the Beşiktaş support.

What we actually have: perfect results, a thin margin

Beşiktaş entered the Europa League at the second qualifying round; they beat Midtjylland 1-0 and 2-0, Hradec Králové 1-0 and 1-0, and reached the play-off. They opened the league with another 1-0. Five matches, six goals. That is 1.2 goals a game.

That is not an identity. That is a margin.

A margin means winning when everything goes right. Alexander Nübel has to stay at that level every week, the centre-backs cannot make a mistake, the opponent has to stay locked in a narrow block. A team that plays on the margin pays for its first bad fifteen minutes. Sure enough, after David Costa's red card left Eyüpspor with ten men on 68 minutes, Beşiktaş's football did not improve — it slowed down.

This is not my claim; it is the head coach's. After the match Vincenzo Italiano said plainly that they have to solve the finishing problem faster, that scorelines like this keep the opponent in the game, and that it creates risk. It is worth something when a manager says that on the night of a win. The trouble is that the same sentence has now been repeated for five matches.

The excuse file is closed

The most comfortable refuge for the Beşiktaş support in recent years was this: "the squad isn't good enough, there's no budget, we aren't in the same lane as our rivals."

That refuge was demolished this summer.

Alexander Nübel arrived in goal from Bayern Munich, Leandro Trossard on the wing from Arsenal, Salih Özcan in midfield from Borussia Dortmund, Kassoum Ouattara at left-back from Monaco, with Doğan Alemdar and İlhan Fakılı added to the squad. And at centre-forward, on a three-year deal filed with the public disclosure platform at a guaranteed €7.5m a season, Dušan Vlahović signed — without a transfer fee being paid.

The Serdal Adalı board did what the supporters had been asking for: a show of strength. Now that strength has to take a shape on the pitch.

Because Beşiktaş finished last season fourth on 60 points, conceded 40 goals and had to enter Europe through the lowest door. This summer's operation is a declaration that the table was not accepted. Once you have posted that declaration, asking for patience is a difficult ask.

The uncomfortable thing the numbers say

One data point surfaced in the post-match press conference, and to me it was the most important sentence of the night: the player taking the most shots across Beşiktaş's five competitive matches this season is Orkun Kökçü, at 5.20 per game.

Think about that. In a squad containing Semih Kılıçsoy, Hyeon-gyu Oh and now Vlahović, the man pulling the trigger most often is a central midfielder shooting from outside the area.

Italiano answered the question with his philosophy: the team's job is to feed the number nine, the wingers are forwards in his eyes too, goals are expected from everyone. It is a sound footballing view. But five matches of data say the view has not yet fully landed on the pitch. The wingers score, the midfield shoots, and the number nine gets into positions without finishing them.

The Eyüpspor match was a small model of all this: the goal came from a single vertical ball in behind by Junior Olaitan. Beşiktaş's sharpest weapon is not unlocking a penalty area in a set structure, it is a moment of directness. Against sides that sit deep, that weapon does not fire every week.

Italiano's football is good; his question is heavy

Let us be fair: what Italiano has brought is visible to the naked eye. The centre-backs play high, the pitch is compressed, the press arrives the instant the ball is lost, the game is fed through the wide areas. The manager was right to say his team "kept its identity" after a match in which he made four changes to the starting eleven; that is the most concrete proof of being a coach's team. For the first time in years, Beşiktaş are leaning on a system rather than on names.

But precisely for that reason, the questions now have to be asked more heavily and more directly:

To the coaching staff: is the rotation between Semih and Oh a competition or an indecision? In this high-risk structure, with the full-backs permanently advanced, will the same courage be shown away at Fenerbahçe?

To the board: with the right-wing file still open and a match at the door of the Europa League phase, is the squad considered "complete"? Vlahović's individual training period is being managed properly — Italiano cited injury risk in saying he could only name him on the bench on Thursday — but can this team afford to drop points while it waits for that shop window?

The supporters' arithmetic is not yours

We saw how the Beşiktaş stand works during the warm-up before the Eyüpspor match. Černý, criticised in recent weeks for the chances he had missed, was called over and backed, one by one. And that man scored the winner.

This stand does not burn a player for making a mistake. It picks him up instead. But it asks for something in return, and that something is not the scoreboard: it is rhythm. These supporters will not sulk at a 1-0 win; they will sulk at a Beşiktaş that puts the game to sleep to protect a 1-0. Because what is written in this club's memory is not the wins, but how the wins were taken.

What really gives me pause is this: on the night Necip Uysal said goodbye, the only academy-produced player in the eleven was Semih Kılıçsoy. The squad's quality has hit the ceiling; the squad's sense of belonging has to be rebuilt. Trossard, Nübel and Vlahović do not have three weeks to learn what this shirt means — they have three matches.

The next twenty days will say everything

The calendar is merciless. Kauno Žalgiris at home on 20 August, the return in Lithuania on 27 August; the winner goes into the 36-team Europa League phase, with the draw on 28 August. In between, a trip to Alanyaspor, and in matchweek four, Kadıköy.

In other words, every question about Beşiktaş's season will be answered before September arrives. A Beşiktaş still hunting ties through 1-0s against the Lithuanian side cannot travel to Kadıköy on the same margin. The cost of this squad cannot be defended with the sentence "we got through the tie."

My claim is plain: Beşiktaş's season will be written not by Nübel's saves but by first touches inside the penalty area. Six goals in five matches is the arithmetic of getting through a qualifying round, not of a title race.

The distance between Necip Uysal's tears and Vlahović's signing ceremony is, in truth, this club's only real question: who do Beşiktaş want to be now? A smart, cautious European side that shuts up shop and gets by on a single goal — or that old, awkward, relentless Kartal that suffocates opponents in the six-yard box, runs up the score and lifts the stands?

The answer will be given on Thursday night at Dolmabahçe. And it should be looked for inside the penalty area, not on the scoreboard.