Soccer: ‘English conspiracy’ upsets Turkey camp

The Turkey team were blocked by security guards from making their way into the stadium and Cobanoglu was initially prevented from taking the players’ passports to the referees before the match could get started. “We only managed to hand over the passports because we knew the Bosnian observer quite well, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to play the match,” Cobanoglu said, adding that he was willing to bet that every problem was the doing of the English.

According to Cobanoglu, a plot was hatched when the fixtures for group seven were being drawn up. “I noticed that the English and the Slovaks were working close together,” he said. Asked why they would do that, Cobanoglu said he had no idea. “But we’ll be watching the England-Slovakia game very closely,” he said. “Then we’ll see how the Slovaks are playing this.”

The FA is reportedly upset that Turkey have yet to decide where the match against England in October is to be played. Turkish officials privately say that they are taking their time in order to find a ground most likely to upset the England squad — either several hundred miles from Istanbul or at the hostile Sukru Saracoglu stadium in Asian Istanbul, where the acoustics and the closeness of the supporters to the pitch are likely to disturb the most serene of players.