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The signing of Arda Guler is already generating plenty of excitement at Real Madrid. Vinicius Junior, for example, has hailed the arrival of the Turkish teenager as further evidence of the club's enduring ability to attract the best young players on the planet: Another one has chosen the greatest [club].
The Guler transfer certainly represents quite the coup for Madrid, given he was also wanted by hated rivals Barcelona, among others. Indeed, he's already being touted as the best player to come out of Turkey since Arda Turan, a hugely divisive figure who left quite the mark on Spanish football.
Turan established himself as one of the best attacking midfielders in the world during his time at Atletico Madrid, but his subsequent spell at Barcelona proved a disaster. So, why did Arda flop at Camp Nou? Was he just not good enough? Or did he simply join at the wrong time?
At the very least, Arda's arrival in Catalunya effectively coincided with the beginning of the end of an era at Barcelona, the moment at which Josep Maria Bartomeu started making one terrible transfer after another, which eventually led to him resigning in disgrace in 2020. In the summer of 2015, though, Bartomeu and Barcelona were basking in the glory of a treble, the decision to sign Luis Suarez the year before having immediately reaped rewards, with the Uruguayan forming arguably the greatest attacking triumvirate the game has ever seen with Neymar and Lionel Messi. Luis Enrique, though, felt he needed even more quality in attack, so he asked then-president Bartomeu to acquire Arda, an accomplished but abrasive attacking midfielder who could also play as a winger - and one of the key members of the Atletico squad that had beaten Barca to the Liga title in 2013-14, and reached the final of the Champions League.
Bartomeu was only too happy to make his coach's request a reality. As far as he was concerned, Arda wasn't an option, he was an obligation. "The board needs to sign a player like him - they have to," Bartomeu said ahead of his re-election as Barca president in the summer of 2015. "They must sign Arda and incorporate him as soon as possible so that he can start the pre-season." Barca didn't waste too much time agreeing a deal with Atletico for an initial €31 million (£26m/$34m) and €7m (£6m/$8m) in variables, meaning he was indeed added to the squad in time for pre-season. The problem was, though, he couldn't actually play.
Because of their ongoing transfer ban, Barca weren't actually able to register Arda. Consequently, he didn't make his debut until January 6, 2016 - nearly six months after joining - meaning he was playing catch-up from the get-go. He unsurprisingly struggled for rhythm and there was talk of a transfer at the end of the season. However, Luis Enrique wanted to persist with a player that he had pushed to sign and, in fairness, there was a period in his first full season of eligibility that Arda appeared as if he might actually manage to lock down a regular spot in the starting line-up - not least after he became just the sixth Barcelona player to score a hat-trick in the Champions League, against Borussia Monchengladbach in December 2016, before then hitting another treble later that month, in a Copa del Rey rout of Hercules.
Arda was hindered by injury in the second half of the season, and even when he returned to full fitness at the tail end of the campaign, he barely saw any game time, spending the entirety of Barca's final four Liga games, and the Copa del Rey final, sitting on the bench. There was just no room for him in the MSN forward line, while Ivan Rakitic and Andres Iniesta were the preferred offensive options alongside Sergio Busquets in midfield.
And a change of manager did not improve Arda's first-team prospects. On the contrary, his Barca career ended the moment Ernesto Valverde replaced Luis Enrique at the helm. Arda didn't see a single second of action under Valverde before desperately accepting a two-and-a-half-year loan deal with Istanbul Basaksehir in January 2018. Valverde made me feel slighted," Arda told beIN Sports Turkey. "He said he was going to play me but he didn't. He said he was going to give me a chance but he didn't. Everything was fine when Luis Enrique was there. We had won the league and the cup. Yes, sometimes things didn't go as planned in the Champions League. But, with Valverde, I felt insignificant and decided to leave. No one, including Valverde, has forced me out of Barcelona. I have made the decision to leave.
An armed Arda later turned up at the hospital where Berkay was taken for surgery, begging for forgiveness and asking to be shot if the singer truly believed that he had been harassing his wife. Arda was ultimately given a suspended jail sentence of two years and eight months for firing a gun to cause panic, illegal possession of weapons and intentional injury. He apologised for his "momentary mistake" and insisted that he had "learned lessons from these events.
Arda eventually left Basaksehir after making just 42 appearances with the club and rejoined Galatasaray in August 2020. However, despite getting to wear the captain's armband, and enjoying a reasonably impressive first season back at the club where he had made his name, he decided to call time on his controversial career in September 2022. It has been an amazing journey for me, for my mother, for my father, for my brother, my wife and my children. I hope it has been for you as well," Turan said. "It was difficult, but it was beautiful. I give my dues to everyone who loves me, values me while playing, values me and hates me.
Arda certainly made a few enemies during his playing days. Diego Simeone described him as "different" - and he was that, on and off the field - but 'difficult' would arguably be a more accurate adjective. Even before leaving Barcelona on loan, he had made headlines for attacking a Turkish journalist while on international duty - which perhaps goes some way towards explaining why Valverde wanted nothing to do with such a combustible character.
But then, Luis Enrique had also struggled to get the best out of a man he had the utmost respect for as a player. There were concerns over his weight and fitness at Camp Nou, while insinuations that he didn't have a particularly high pain threshold dated back to his time at Atletico. As for Arda, who has just begun his coaching career at Turkish second-tier outfit Eyupspor, he knows that he made big mistakes during his career, particularly in his latter years back in Turkey, but says that "the reason is purely psychological.
I have been suffering from sleep problems for a long time," he told students in a speech at a university in Istanbul in May of last year. I couldn't sleep comfortably. I could not take good care of myself. In some periods in the past, I could not recover mentally. I [would be] on a diet, I [would] break it after 10 days. I [would] start working, then I [would] give up. I was taking better care of myself in Spain because I felt free. I felt myself complete during my Spanish adventure. They were good days. I miss them, but it's a beautiful kind of longing. As Arda Guler embarks upon his own Spanish adventure, one can only hope that he ends up looking back on his career with a similar level of fondness - but a lot less regret.
Source: goal.com
