Earplugs and painkillers: the deafening hell of Turkish stadiums | OneFootball

By Rémi Banet with Cem Taylan

Kjetil Knutsen admits he had “a massive headache” while managing Norway's Bodo/Glimt in their 3-1 defeat to Galatasaray last Wednesday in the Champions League, despite wearing earplugs to protect himself from the noise of the stands.

“The noise was too loud, so I ended up taking [the earplugs] out,” the Norwegian coach explained at the end of a match played in the volcanic atmosphere that Turkish fans create to support their clubs.

“Booing when the opponent has the ball is part of the game: it's essential to put pressure,” says Ali Kemal Kayis in the stands, wearing a Galatasaray shirt, accompanied by his seven-year-old son.

Every two minutes, the young fan imitates the adults by putting his fingers in his mouth, most of the time unable to whistle.

“He tries, but he hasn't learned well yet,” admits his father, still proud of the environment that the press often calls “the hell of Istanbul,” where Liverpool was defeated at the end of September by Galatasaray 1-0.

“It's the most hostile environment I can remember (…) A place full of furious crazies,” commented Lewis Steele that night, a British journalist used to games at Anfield, another stadium famous for its atmosphere in the stands.

At the end of the game, Galatasaray midfielder Ilkay Gündogan stated that a Liverpool player approached him to ask “if the atmosphere is always this incredible.”

Photo: YASIN AKGUL / AFP

108.5 decibels

As a precaution, several Norwegian journalists present in the press box on Wednesday protected their ears with wireless headphones to try to isolate the sound of the fans as much as possible.

One of them opened an app on his phone to measure the noise and the needle hit the red zone: 108.5 decibels, a level almost as painful as a scream in the ear (110 dB), according to a World Health Organization (WHO) chart.

“I've been to many stadiums, but this is clearly the loudest,” said Joerund Wessel Carlsen, a journalist from the Norwegian public television broadcaster NRK, to AFP.

His broadcast colleague Carl-Erik Trop, a former professional player, even took painkillers for the headache he felt after 90 minutes of “unbearable” boos.

Galatasaray mocked on social media X, asking future visitors to their stadium to bring ear protectors.

“Annoy the opponent”

“In Turkey, they always want to annoy the opponent and the referee,” explains sports journalist Alp Ulagay to AFP, who claims that the tradition of booing came from basketball gyms in Istanbul, also known for their hostile environment.

The construction, at the beginning of this century, of the new stadiums of Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, and Besiktas, the three major clubs in the city, made booing popular among fans.

“Before, Turkish stadiums were very open. With the new, more covered stadiums, all the noise made by the fans has much more impact,” Ulagay analyzes.

The journalist recalls a Besiktas vs. RB Leipzig match in September 2017 for the Champions League: German striker Timo Werner asked to be substituted at 32 minutes, feeling dazed due to the deafening noise.

In recent years, fans of the three big Istanbul clubs have claimed to have reached decibel records.

Fenerbahçe claims that the noise in their stands reached 154.9 dB during a goal celebration in August, a noise level higher than a plane taking off.

In the stands of Rams Park, Galatasaray's stadium, Ali Kemel Kayis is not worried about his son's eardrums.

“Sometimes I cover his ears when it's too loud, but it's not something that bothers him,” he smiles.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.