Istanbul Başakşehir and Kocaelispor met in the opening round of the Süper Lig at the Başakşehir Fatih Terim Stadium on Sunday. The hosts won 2-0 with goals from Christopher Operi and Eldor Shomurodov. The result leaves Başakşehir on four points in ninth place while Kocaelispor remain sixth on six.
Operi opened the scoring in the fourteenth minute. There was then a flurry of VAR checks around the half-hour mark when Emin Bayram had two goals cancelled for Kocaelispor. The first incident came in the twenty-seventh minute, then again in the twenty-ninth. By then, Tayfur Bingöl had already picked up a yellow card for the visitors.
Shomurodov made it two in the seventy-second minute. The game saw several changes in the second half. Fayzullaev was replaced in the sixty-third minute while Kutlu came on for Kocaelispor in the sixty-seventh. Shomurodov himself was substituted in the seventy-fifth minute, as was Bertuğ Yıldırım. Bingöl came off in the seventy-sixth minute.
And here's the thing about the statistics. Başakşehir had 51 per cent possession and created 1.96 expected goals. They took thirteen shots with five on target. Kocaelispor registered 0.43 expected goals from four shots on target. The visitors made more clearances with twenty-nine compared to nineteen. Both sides received two yellow cards.
The clean-sheet run came to an end for Kocaelispor after three matches without conceding. Başakşehir had drawn one and lost two of their previous fixtures. The hosts will look to build momentum from this performance while the visitors face questions about their defensive vulnerability.