Beşiktaş and the Italiano effect: Why four straight wins are not a tactical bubble

Four straight wins, twelve points from five matches, a derby victory at Şükrü Saracoğlu, and a 4-1 demolition of Marseille in the Europa League. Those numbers are making all of Turkey call Vincenzo Italiano a 'wizard'. But I have spent enough time watching the Süper Lig to know that the most dazzling starts often bury the alibi for collapse beneath them. The question is not whether Beşiktaş are playing well. The question is: how much of those twelve points is real tactics, and how much is the temporary inspiration of a side that has just changed manager?

The next opponent is Amed Sportif Faaliyetler, a newly promoted side playing at home in Diyarbakır, in southeastern Turkey. It is the first time the two clubs meet in the Süper Lig. Their last encounter was the 2026 Turkish Cup, which Beşiktaş won 4-0. Look only at tradition and form and this is the match everyone calls 'three points by default'. That very assumption is what I want to dissect.

Beşiktaş are on a four-game league winning streak. They crushed Çorum FK 6-2, beat Fenerbahçe 2-1 away, and dispatched Erzurumspor 3-0. The black-and-whites have scored thirteen goals in five matches — a rate of 2.6 per game, a number in the range of Europe's top attacking sides. In the Europa League they thrashed Marseille 4-1, a result even the most optimistic Beşiktaş fan would not have dared to dream of. Then came a closed training session devoted entirely to match tactics. President Adalı appeared with the squad at Diyarbakır airport. Captain Orkun Kökçü greeted the fans, signed shirts, and turned the arrival into a festival. That atmosphere is beautiful. But atmosphere does not score goals.

What strikes me about Italiano is not the goal count but the structure of vertical progression. He is a coach famous for quick ball recovery, for pushing the ball forward immediately after winning it, and for pressing in the opponent's third. At Fiorentina he took a mid-table side and turned it into a serious attacking threat through exactly this method. At Beşiktaş he is repeating the formula. The 2-1 win at Fenerbahçe was no accident. It was a team that knew it would be pressed, accepted the siege, and unleashed lightning counter-attacks at the right moments. That is a win only a side with real tactical character produces.

But here I have to separate emotion from numbers. Thirteen goals in five matches is the statistic of an outlier, not a stable system. A 6-2 win always smells more of a weak opponent than of greatness. Remove the Çorum game from the data and Beşiktaş's average goals per match drops to about 1.75. Still good — but no longer frightening. And this is what the busy analysts praising the club ignore: Beşiktaş's finishing rate under Italiano exceeds the quality of chances they actually create — meaning that once luck regresses to the mean, the winning streak will thin out very quickly.

I have watched this kind of start many times, in many leagues. There is a pattern the media always repeats: a new coach arrives, wins three or four games, and is dubbed a 'game-changer'. Two months later, when the side drops points in matches it should have won, the same journalists start asking about a 'tactical impasse'. The tactical bubble bursts, and beneath the glossy paint lies the real skeleton of the league. What I want to know is what Beşiktaş's skeleton looks like once Italiano's paint is scraped away.

Start with the defence. Beşiktaş's only league defeat came away at Alanyaspor, and it was a match in which the opponent executed transitions extremely well. That loss revealed what the wins did not: when Beşiktaş are forced to dominate the ball against an organised opponent, Italiano's system loses its strongest weapon — the space behind the opposing back line. This Beşiktaş is at its best when reactive, when it can press and exploit mistakes. Put them in the position of having to dictate with the ball and they become slow and dependent on individual moments.

This has direct implications for the trip to Diyarbakır. Amed Sportif, newly promoted as they are, will understand they cannot trade blows with Beşiktaş. They will sit in a low block, cede possession, and wait for transitions. That is exactly the context in which Beşiktaş's attacking inspiration is most tested. If Amed play it right, they are not attacking Italiano's system — they are attacking the system's blind spot.

Not everyone wants to hear this, but I have to say it plainly: weak teams are not cowardly when they play the football the rich do not want to understand. The debate over massed defence is always led by people who have never had to stand in a goal that is smaller in resources. Amed have every right to play 5-4-1, funnel the ball wide, and break the rhythm. That is smart football being mocked because too few people understand it. And if they hold Beşiktaş to a draw, all of Turkey will call it a shock — when in reality it would be the most logical outcome of a match in which the stronger side is forced to use a weapon that is not its specialty.

This is where I have to argue against myself. The hypothesis above only holds if Italiano has no Plan B. But who dares say he doesn't? Beşiktaş trained behind closed doors, entirely focused on match tactics. Captain Kökçü is at the peak of his form. The attack has multiple rotation options that Italiano has not yet fully exploited. If he drops a midfielder deep to break the low block, or uses early set pieces to take the lead and force Amed to push up, the 'transition trap' scenario collapses inside the first half hour.

We should also be fair to Italiano on the human side. He inherited a club that had just passed through a period of instability, with fan pressure and a board needing results to calm the mood. Rotating in a season where the Europa League and the Süper Lig run in parallel is a matter of survival, not preference. A coach without the freedom to rotate deeply pushes his key men into adult-level intensity before their bodies are ready — a lesson Turkish football has learned many times through the injuries of twenty-year-olds. Italiano is walking exactly that fine line.

There is one detail I like about this match: it is the first-ever Süper Lig meeting between the two clubs. That means there is no head-to-head data to lean on, no tactical memory to repeat. This is the kind of match in which prediction models built on history become useless. And precisely because of that, it is the kind of match in which a coach's tactical instinct becomes the decisive variable. Italiano will have to read the game in the first twenty minutes — not from memory, but from watching how Amed deploy their block.

To those now swept up in flags and the story of a 'Beşiktaş revival': six months ago, this same club was considered a structurally unstable collective. Six matches do not erase six years of problems. But six matches are enough to prove that Italiano did not come to burn money on an aesthetic project. He came to optimise what was already there. And optimisation — not miracles — is what is putting Beşiktaş back in the race.

I have seen too many 'tactical bubbles' to trust dazzling starts. But I have also seen enough to know that not every dazzling start is a bubble. The difference lies in whether the system creates chances whose quality can be repeated, or whether it is living off anomalous games. Italiano's Beşiktaş have not yet answered that question. Diyarbakır will not answer it fully, but it will begin to close the gap between the story and the truth.

Amed Sportif do not play ugly football. They play the football the rich do not want to understand. If Beşiktaş win comfortably, praise them — but do not call it proof of anything greater than a match between a big club and a promoted side. And if they drop points, do not rush to call it a crisis. Treat it as data. Because in football, honest data is always more valuable than praise.

The question I leave for the night in Diyarbakır is not whether Beşiktaş win or draw. The question is: when Italiano is forced to use Plan B, does he have enough depth to turn Plan B into the new Plan A? That is the real test of any revival project — and it begins with a match all of Turkey is calling the easiest of the season.