Vlahovic's 73rd Minute Goal Beats Fenerbahce for Besiktas

The ball reached Dusan Vlahovic inside the Fenerbahce penalty area after a pass from Orkun Kokcu, and he hit it first time into the bottom right corner without a second thought. Goalkeeper Ederson dove the right way, but too late. It was the 73rd minute of the Istanbul derby, and that single touch decided who would leave the pitch as the winner on the road.

Before that goal, Vlahovic already had reason to be furious. In the 49th minute, his goal was disallowed for a rough challenge on Ngolo Kante, after referee Halil Umut Meler first awarded a foul in the home side’s favor, only to reverse the call some fifteen minutes later following a VAR review. At one point, the Serbian forward nearly came to blows with Fenerbahce captain Milan Skriniar, the former Inter defender. From the first minute to the last, the derby was a fierce battle, both tactically and emotionally.

The flow of the match showed just how tight it was until the very end. Fenerbahce took the lead through Skriniar in the 26th minute, and Ridvan Yilmaz equalized twelve minutes later. The score held through the middle of the second half, until Vlahovic’s turnaround goal in the 73rd minute sent Besiktas to a 2-1 win over their direct rival.

For the Serbia international, it was his fourth goal in five matches since joining Besiktas in mid-August. In the previous round, he scored a hat trick against Corum in a 6-2 win, and he has now kept up that pace at exactly the moment his team needed it most, against a side chasing a Champions League spot under coach Ismail Kartal. Vlahovic joined Vincenzo Italiano’s squad in the closing weeks of summer, after months of training alone, outside the first team picture at Juventus.

We wrote earlier about that period and about the breakup with Juventus, when Vlahovic revealed he had gone three years without speaking to the club. The picture is changing week by week now. A player who spent months waiting for the chance to train normally with a squad has, in three weeks in Turkey, become the hero of a derby against a Champions League contender, on the road, in an atmosphere where he also had to keep his own composure after the clash with Skriniar.

For a player barely three weeks into his time in Turkey, this was also a personal test of temperament. It is not the first time Vlahovic has played under the weight of a fierce rivalry, but few foreign signings manage to decide a result in their first taste of this fixture, let alone away from home and after a disallowed goal that could easily have thrown them off balance. Instead, he came back 24 minutes later and finished exactly the way a striker of his price tag is expected to, coldly and without a trace of nerves in front of goal.

With this win, Besiktas showed they are playing for the top of the Turkish Super Lig table, and in three weeks Vlahovic has become a player factored into the equation for every round ahead. The disallowed goal in the 49th minute could have spoiled his night, but 24 minutes later came an answer that will be remembered longer than any refereeing decision. The question now is not whether Vlahovic will keep scoring in Turkey, but how soon that form reaches the national team’s coach.