Everything is something happened

In late 2007, Turkish football coach Fatih Terim found himself in a rather precarious position.

Having lost a Euro 2008 qualifier to archrivals Greece, 0-1 at home no less, he found himself under the proverbial "cosh". The press, now baying for blood decided to test his English skills.

In a rather clumsy turn of phrase, Terim uttered the famous words...

"Everything is something happened."

While this became an early meme of Turkish football fan culture, the phrase always stuck out to me. It was as if Fatih hoca¹ had reached into a diminishing future and tried to pre-emptively warn us of what was to come.

A Tactical Breakdown

As the years have gone on, I've thought more and more about this phrase.

On the face of it, it comes across as quite an unintentional comment in presumably Fatih hoca's second or third language. That said though, the phrase has always struck me as transcendental.

There are moments in time, I guess you could say moments in culture that retroactively reflect to me as premonitions of the future. Alongside Terim's clunky expression, we might also recall Guy Goma's² thousand-yard stare, looking back at us from 2006.

Terim's phrase somehow functions both in the present and the past. A reminder that the present may shape the future, but we shouldn't forget the past. It is with that then, that I move forward using this phrase as a framework for accepting the absurdity of the now as a means of arriving in the future.

Not to make light of the untold suffering, but we all need ways to stop, re-calibrate and find the way forward. "Everything is something happened", great. Now what? How do we fix it? How do we move forward?

Anyway, all this to say that me as a yoghurt based canine ascribing the notion of Terim being some type of visionary seer is no more absurd than reality itself in 2026.

Like the televisual ghost of Guy Goma before him, he knew.

Nothing can convince me otherwise.

Reality has been sour for a long time, how do we change it? It is with this phrase then that I remind myself, Faith hoca made it back to the present to warn us and so must we for future generations, now.

...and that is what I'm choosing to kick off this blog with.