İlhan Cavcav

İlhan Cavcav (born October 4, 1935) is the Chairman of Gençlerbirliği Football club in Ankara, Turkey.

History

Personal life

İlhan Cavcav was born on October 4, 1935 in Hamamönü,Ankara Turkey. His father Haşim Cavcav had 2 wives and 17 children. He owned a flour mill in Mamak and a small bakery shop. İlhan Cavcav left school at the age of 14 in order to help support the family and started to work with his father as a cashier in the mill. In 1960, he formed his own business and in 1969 he opened his own more modern flour mill in Ankara (Ankara Un Sanayii).

Early years playing football

At 16, he started to play football with a local team Mamak Maske Spor. When he was 19 he was transferred to another Ankara team PTT Spor (now Türk Telekomspor). Mr. Cavcav has stated that PTT expected him to play professionally and he was unable to due to his work at the flour mill with his father. Still 19, he briefly joined another local team Bahçeli Gençlik Spor before ending this period. It was to be years later that he returned to football as a Chairman.

Career as Chairman

His first trial as a chairman was with the local Ankara team Hacettepe Kulübü in 1976. After Hacettepe relegated in the same season, he resigned from his position. In 1977, he served under Yahya Demirel as a board member in his current club Gençlerbirliği. In 1978's election he became the Chairman for Gençlerbirliği when the team was in Turkish Second League. Gençlerbirliği relegated to Third League in 1979. The Turkish Football federation merged the second and third Leagues in 1980. This was an automatic promotion to second league. In 1983 Cavcav's Gençlerbirliği promoted to Turkish First League. Gençlerbirliği played in 1st League except 1988-89 season when played in 2nd league.

In recent years, Gençlerbirliği fans have been highly critical of Cavcav stating that the club turned into a company seeking for the maximum profit and ignoring the target of success in the Turkish League and in European competitions. Fans are not happy with the situation about the instability of the squad because Cavcav never rejects the transfer offers coming from the big teams in Turkey for the best players of the team.

On the other hand, anti-democratic attitudes in the elections of club management also are used as a means of criticizing Cavcav. Allegations were; in last club elections, nearly 1200 new members were added to the club who were not even Genclerbirligi fan. Opposition group went to court However, the Turkish court did not approve the case.

Achievements

* In 1978 Gençlerbirliği S.K. had no training facilities and now the team has one of the largest youth programs in Turkey and 50 acres of training facilities in Bestepe, Ankara (Beştepe İlhan Cavcav Tesisleri)
*He remains Chairman for Gençlerbirliği since 1978.

Trivia

* İlhan Cavcav has two sons and both are serving on the current Gençlerbirliği board.
* He personally visited African nations numerous times for football talent scouting.
* Gençlerbirliği had 22 chairmen in the 54 years to 1974 and for the last 29 years just one person in the role.

External links

* [http://www.genclerbirligi.org.tr/ Gençlerbirliği Official website]
* [http://www.alkaralar.com/ Fans site]
* [http://www.gencler.org Genclerbirliği Fans and Statistics site]

References

* [http://arsiv.zaman.com.tr/2000/09/04/roportaj1/roportaj1.htm]
* [http://arsiv.hurriyetim.com.tr/tatilpazar/turk/98/10/04/eklhab/11ekl.htm]
* [http://www.kolej.org/dergi/sayi83/spor1.shtml]