Referee, rabbit holes and radicalization: The age of the conspiracy of football is here

Slavko Vincic was sitting on his return flight to Ljubljana and may have wondered whether this is as narrow as a 45-year-old Slovenian football referee who, like Jason Bourne or Eliot Ness or maybe even his absolute food, is ahead.

He was learned in forty -eight hours earlier in Istanbul. The outline of his order was clear. He should get in, do without justice and get out. There were no loose ending, there were no mistakes. He should not attract attention. He shouldn't make enemies, but he wasn't there to find friends. The job had to be clean and it had to be quick.

And so it was more or less as it was. Vincic had been hired to protect the intercontinental derby, the poisonous pyretic meeting of Galatasaray and Fenerbahce in the Turkish superlig. He had become the first foreign official to play a game of the Turkish league for more than half a century.

Everything was considered, pretty good. The success of the success was quite low: the game had been played until the completion, which was a considerable triumph under the circumstances. It was probably the best thing that had ended as a goalless with only the seven yellow cards and not particularly permanent controversy.

But that doesn't mean it was easy. At some point, Vincic was forced to delay the game when the fans in the stands hurled their torches on each other, and the police tried to restore order. There was an inappropriate dispute between the coaching staff of the two teams; As a result, Galatasaray said that they would make a formal complaint in which the Fenerbahce manager Jose Mourinho was accused of submitting “racist statements”. Fenerbahce says Mourinho's comments “are completely out of context and deliberately distorted” and they weigh their own legal measures.

The Turkish Football Association had paid Vincic somewhere in the region of € 10,000 (£ 8,300, $ 10,500) – as well as a DIEM allowance of € 800. In view of the stress, he could be inclined to increase his fee a little next time. And unfortunately there will be a next time.

Vincics Cameo as a pipe for tenants should serve as an alarm bell that should ring out loud not only in Turkey, but also in global football. The fact that it was considered necessary to recruit an outsider in order to play the greatest game of the Super Lig should not be seen as a brave innovation, as a blueprint, a precedent for others. It is none of these things. Instead, it is a nadir, a harbinger, a warning of what will come.

The road that brought Vincic to Istanbul is a long, winding and worrying. Turkish football disappeared into the rabbit hole a long time ago. The super league has been for years of paranoia and suspected and what could kindly be described as a tendency towards conspiracy.

All three major powers of Istanbul – Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas – have long believed that they are actively undermined by the shadowy forces that aim to help their rivals. Trabzonspor, the largest team outside of Istanbul, is convinced that they are suppressed by the power of these three clubs. Everyone else believes that things are manipulated in favor of an elite that often contains trabzonspor.

However, something has changed in recent years. The conspiracy theories that always bubble under the surface have reached a boiling point, their toxic vapors devour and slowly frozen the league.

In 2023, the President of Ankaragucu stormed into the field and hit a referee in the head. In the same month, the President of Istanbulsspor ordered his players to give up a game after not giving what he believed to be an obvious punishment. The following year Fenerbahce was so convinced of her victim that they threatened to completely leave the league.

And then, at the beginning of this month, Adana Demirspor was instructed to give up a game against Galatasaray in protest against a decision to give a punishment to her opponents. The club published an explanation in which he had decoded the “systematic, deliberate referee errors and injustice” that they had suffered. The punishment, as they made clear, was the last straw. Remarkably produced Fenerbahce – a team that did not notice that involved in the game – quickly his own statement and accused Galatasaray of “deceptive” referees and fans in various ways. “Thanks to them, there is no trust or justice in Turkish football,” concluded it.

This was the background that ended with both clubs and the Turkish Federation, in which the Intercontinental Derby could only be played under the patronage of a foreign referee – someone who was undisturbed, unshaky, unexpected. Vincic, referee at last year's Champions League final, was selected and the last honest man anointed in the game.

There is a tendency to treat Turkish football as a special case within the rest of Europe to see an inherent and inevitable difference. It is wild and exotic and essentially strange, not as much as an outlier. This oriental approach is calming, but also misleading. Turkey is not in a different way. It's just on the road.

At the beginning of this month, Real Madrid sent a four -page letter to the football authorities of Spain, in which the club's well -known belief was presented that the country's referee system was “completely faulty” and claims that “decisions against Real Madrid have achieved a measure of manipulation and falsification of the competition that can no longer be ignored”.

El Escándalo Mundial Sigue Creciendo.

– Real Madrid CF (@Realmadrid) February 3, 2025

For reasons of clarity, this was not a group of fans who were stung by disappointment and defeat and vented their darkest suspicion; It was not a manager or player who was still sweaty and claimed without a conclusive evidence that standards have slipped. It was a club at an institutional level and wrote extensively, which he apparently seems to believe that it is the victim of a far -reaching conspiracy.

A few days later – and with rather less fanfare – Milan announced her intention to do something similar and wrote to the organization that monitored referees in Serie A to complain that the league officials did not show their players sufficiently “respect” (what this means, not admittedly, immediately). “It is an unacceptable situation for us,” said Zlatan Ibrahimovic, now an all-purpose manager at Milan.

For his honor, Ibrahimovic chose at least his words more carefully than Pablo Longoria, Marseiles President this weekend. Longoria was at least initially caught in the film; After a while he was completely aware that he was recorded-over “corruption” among the referees of France after his team had released a player in a 3-0 defeat in Auxerre.

“If Marseille has a suggestion to join a super league, we will go immediately,” said Longoria. The league, he suggested, was “manipulated”. His trainer Roberto de Zerbi was only a little measured, which indicates that the standard of the referee in France is so bad that he would not take any other job in the country. “If French are satisfied with this decision level, then good for you,” he said.

Longoria then tried to weaken his comments with what could be described as a limited success – corruption apparently has a different meaning in Spanish than French, although it did not indicate what it was. He does not really believe that French football is manipulated – but the damage has been in several ways.

Just like in Turkey, it is now clear that a burden on the conspiracy leads to a large part of European football. It is not only fans who believe that they are victims of institutional prejudices, but also managers and presidents and those who should also know better. Worse, you are now ready to say the quiet part loudly, to fuel the flames and to cope with your suspicion.

The counter -argument is that Italy and France still wear the scars of the actual corruption scandals while Spain has its own case. Marseila's sole European cup victory is spoiled by the allegations of the game against the former president of the club, Bernard Tapie, and series A is still recovering from the effects of Calciopoli. In Spain, the investigation into Barcelona's payments to a prominent referee leader continues, although those who affect everyone involved deny any misconduct.

Sometimes conspiracies are real; Just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not after you like Joseph Heller and/or Kurt Cobain. However, this does not justify the liberal spread of misconduct allegations; If at all, it makes it all the more important that they are only made if there is actual evidence.

And despite what they may say, none of the clubs, the fouls cry, has something that approaches this. Instead, they only have evidence of the Do Your Own Research Form, a number of cherry facts that were either touched on the context or intentionally misinterpreted.

This seems to be a suffering of modernity, a trope that can largely be attributed to social media and has obtained the authority to abolish governments and to rewrite the recent history. Football was described as a radicalization process in other contexts.

And although the consequences for the game may not be as bad as for the selection of an example, the national state of Ukraine, they are still serious.

The most direct is the precedent that Vincic has set. He still spoke to Mourinho in his changing room after the Intercontinental Derby when Trabzonspor also applied for her games against Fenerbahce and Galatasaray. It is difficult not to see your point of view; Why should only two teams be guaranteed, which Mourinho has called his “credibility”? He will probably be a busy man.

But that's just the beginning. Jeremy Stinat, the referee who provoked Marseila's anger, let the tires thrown on the cars of his and his wife's cars ahead of Longorias Rant. There were reports in France that there was a kind of intervention even after the game in his house. It is uncomfortable to imagine where it could lead at some point.

However, the most harmful danger is also the one that is least tangible. The ultimate consequence of the suspicion that performs Turkish football is a suspension of faith. As many fans, trainers and managers have come – or have been led – to believe that the league has no integrity and that their importance began to reduce.

Sport stops working when there is a feeling that what you have seen is not real in any way if the result of a game, a tournament or a season can be dismissed as somehow. This has potential economic effects, but it also has a spiritual one. If everything is manipulated, why would you watch? If the whole thing is repaired, why would it be interested?

Above all, it is that Longoria and Ibrahimovic and whoever is responsible for thoughts for the writing department in the Real Madrid break. Their leagues all know the damage caused by corruption. You should be very careful to appoint your shadow for your own goals.

(Toptoto: Hakan Akgun/Anadolu via Getty Images)