Durban - “People are afraid to breathe and sleep.” That’s how Turkish soccer coach Muhsin Ertugral described the mood back home after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkiye and northwest Syria earlier this week.
Ertugral jetted out of Cape Town on Thursday and headed for his home city of Istanbul to help with rescue and relief efforts made possible by some within the soccer fraternity.
Ertugral, 63, made his coaching debut in South African football 23 years ago when Kaizer Chiefs hired him as head coach ahead of the 1999/2000 season. He was with the Glamour Boys until 2002 when he was sacked for indifferent results.
However, he left the Naturena-based club in that first spell having won numerous trophies including the famed “Operation Vat Alles” haul of the BP Top 8 Cup, Coca-Cola Cup, and Confederation of African Football’s Cup Winners Cup competition also known as the Mandela Cup.
Having coached Chiefs in two separate spells, Ertugral has also coached other giants of South African football including, Orlando Pirates, Cape Town Spurs (formerly Ajax Cape Town) in three separate spells, Santos, Durban-based Lamontville Golden Arrows and Maritzburg United.
In a brief statement made by Ertugral in light of the unfolding disaster in Turkiye, the coach expressed deep concern and solidarity for his compatriots. He said that although his family was fine, the earthquake had severely affected all of them psychologically.
“It’s the helplessness, that we can’t eat, we can’t sleep but just pray for those souls,” said Ertugral. “This is exactly the situation; people are ashamed to breathe and sleep. As those souls are stuck there, our hearts are also squeezed here.
In Haluk Levent’s words, ‘Does one ever want to be a scoop?’ I wish I could be,” Ertugral said. The United Nations said in a statement that the earthquake struck as the humanitarian crisis in north-west Syria was already worsening, with needs at their highest level since the Syrian civil war began over 12 years ago.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE