Sergen Yalçın

Ali Rıza Sergen Yalçın (born 5 November 1972), known as Sergen Yalçın, is a Turkish football commentator, coach and former international midfielder who's the head coach of Süper Lig club Antalyaspor.

Yalçın is one of nine players to play for each of the Big Three clubs of Istanbul, and one of only two players who have played for these three clubs as well as Trabzonspor along with Burak Yılmaz.

Ali Rıza Sergen Yalçın opened his eyes to the world as the first child of Günsel-Özer Yalçın couple in Kilyos town of Istanbul on November 5, 1972.

Two more brothers, first Gürsoy and then Volkan, were born after him.

He met football before he went to school on the beaches of Kilyos.

Like Sergen, father Özer Yalçın was a footballer and he soon realized his son's interest in football and his special talent at the age of children.

Taking to Beşiktaş for the auditions, Özer Yalçın entrusts the little Sergen to the palms of Serpil Hamdi Tuzun.

However, Özer Yalçın, who was working at the hotel at that time, took Sergen to training.

Later, little Sergen, who started secondary school, starts to go and come on his own.

Sergen began at Beşiktaş JK in 1991, and quickly became renowned for his skill and creativity.

His first spell at the club saw him score 46 goals in 158 games – no mean feat for a midfielder.

However, it was known that Sergen lacked professionalism.

After a 4–1 defeat to Samsunspor, he was publicly criticised by the Beşiktaş deputy president due to his careless lifestyle.

Sergen responded to the club official by insulting him.

Subsequently, Beşiktaş imposed a club-record fine of over £150,000.

He was later forgiven after apologising but the fine stayed.

Sergen then demanded a new and improved contract which was denied by the board.

As expected, Sergen departed from the club and became Turkey's record signing when he moved to İstanbulspor for £5.5m in 1997.

Thereafter, Sergen now desired a move to the European fields and began contract negotiations with Internazionale and AC Milan.

Terms could not be met with the Italian giants.

After struggling with his weight due to months of inaction, İstanbulspor failed to offload him, so Jet-Pa (a sports company) bought his contract and arranged a loan deal with Fenerbahçe, which involved him wearing a personalised shirt promoting the company.

Under the coaching firstly from Joachim Löw and Rıdvan Dilmen, he seemed to have buckled down to the task.

But when Zdenek Zeman took over, Sergen was consistently engaged in trench warfare.

Sergen publicly criticised Zeman for trying to play him on the wing, which he believed was not his best position, and was accused of faking injury to avoid training sessions.

Along with many other incidents, the final straw came with the home game against Bursaspor.

When he eventually came on as a substitute, Sergen missed a simple scoring chance, which many of the fans believe to have been a deliberate miss as an act of protest or just pure spite.

In the late stages of the game, with the score locked at 2–2, he further infuriated the supporters by strolling across to take a corner as though he had all the time in the world.

Midway through the 1999–2000 season, Sergen had his contract terminated by Fenerbahçe.

Due to his terrific individual showings for the national team, Sergen attracted attention from several foreign clubs.

There were speculations about a move to FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund.

Despite heavy speculation, he finished the season at arch-rivals Galatasaray SK and displayed impressive showings to help Galatasaray do the domestic double.

Sergen signed for the club too late in the season to be eligible for the UEFA Cup campaign, and as Galatasaray made the trip to Leeds for the second tie of the semi-final, Sergen was instructed to report to training in Istanbul.

But instead of continuing his training in Istanbul, he took a little trip of his own to Northern Cyprus.

While casinos were banned on the Turkish mainland, they remained open in Northern Cyprus which attracted quite a lot of gambling trade from Turkey.

It attracted Sergen for precisely that reason and he spent much of his brief stay there in a casino.

When he returned to Istanbul, he told manager Fatih Terim he was tired from the journey and asked if he could skip a training session.

Terim is a fearsome disciplinarian and the reaction was predictably explosive.

Sergen skipped title celebrations after the Galatasaray board made it clear they would not have him back next season.

After Euro 2000, Sergen was on the verge of a transfer to Newcastle United, manager Bobby Robson being a long-time admirer.

The deal fell through and he instead moved to Trabzonspor and became the first player to have represented the big four clubs in Turkey.