How do Turkish teams always seem to end up with way more foreign players than they’re allowed in their squad? It seems to have been the case whenever we’ve been linked to a player from a Turkish club over the years that they’ve been over their foreign players quota and need to offload.
And 22 when the limit is 14? With Allahyar having already left? That’s 50% over the limit. Do you just sign these players and let them play reserve football all year?
Situation is current so yes, with Allahyar having already left, they have 22 (Alioski included - almost finished transfer) players. Well Fenerbahce is unique case, they didn't have a succesful season since 13/14, so since then they keep changing manager and managers are keep changing squad. Every year, 15 players in with 3-5 years of contracts and only selling 1-2 players max, 3-4 runs out of contacts so you end up footballer inflation.
So story of this year, general consensus was Fenerbahce has a good squad, they just need a left-back and striker but after they signed up Jorge Jesus as manager and Jesus signed up plenty of Portuguese speaking players, Joao Pedro, Bruma, Henrique, Arao, Lincoln, Peres. They made their first left-back transfer yesterday with Alioski, and still looking for a striker.
About reserve league, it has been re-established this year. What Fenerbahce do is basically sign players, then pay their salaries, have a huge pre-season camp and then loan players to another club free and usually they are not young players like Chelsea did, mostly above 28, as my list above suggest. It is a financially dire situation and that's probably why Acun keeps paying good amount for players, because let's be honest Fenerbahce would offload Allahyar and Ozan free, just to get rid of their salary. For Ozan Tufan, scenario was different though, he sided with Ozil against club manager and president and since Ozil brought to Fenerbahce by Acun with sponsorship, Acun kind of owned a favor to Ozan Tufan, so i believe Acun is paying back to both Ozan and Fenerbahce, for the damage he created with Ozil's salary and dent on Ozan's career.