After spending a year in international obscurity on loan from Fenerbahce at Eyupspor Kulubu, the former Turkish international, Emre Mor, returned to the spotlight last week when he scored a crucial extra-time goal against his former club Olympiacos Piraeus in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers to make an immediate impact for his new club NEC Nijmegen.
Mor told Ziggo Sport after the match that it has been a difficult few years for him. "These haven't been the easiest years. I’ll tell you more about it in the near future, but it feels good to come back and score. I’ve dreamed of this for months, which is why I got a bit emotional."
"I’m just trying to be happy. Everyone wants success, but for me, the most important thing is finding joy again. If that’s there, the rest follows naturally."
While the the management of the Dutch club who on Wednesday take on Bodo/Glimt in their efforts to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in club history, acknowledged that landing a player of his technical capacity is usually out of their reach, Mor is is now looking to jumpstart his career in the Eredivisie following a nomadic path which has included Borussia Dortmund, Celta Vigo, and various Turkish clubs.
Once dubbed "The Turkish Messi", Emre Mor's career is a tragic example of what might have been as the creative midfielder revealed enormous potential early in his football life to attract the attention of several huge European clubs, only for him to mishandle his talent as he has continuously been haunted by his enormous temper.
Flashscore has tracked down a man who, about 10 years ago, took on the role of a bit of an extra father figure for Mor, as he tried to steer the youngster's career in the right direction. Former Danish Under-16 national team coach Per Holm got to know Mor, who was born in Denmark as the son of a Turkish father and a Danish mother, when Mor began showing his enormous potential at Copenhagen club Lyngby.
"When he first entered our system, he was an extremely small player who could do extraordinary things with the ball and who had an amazing eye for the game, which was very unusual for a player around 14 or 15 years of age", says Holm to Flashscore.
Due to his size, Mor was enrolled in a back-then newly established "Future" national team - a squad for players who were lagging in physical development but were otherwise on par with talented peers of the same age.
"The Future national team helped keep him engaged with us, because initially he couldn't hold his own physically on the other team even though he’d probably claim otherwise. So, it gave me the chance to work closely with him, allowing me to be patient and bring him along gradually," says Holm, who especially remembers a Future tournament in Belgium where Danish football legend Morten Olsen was in awe of his talent.
"He was a standout player on the 'Future' national team. Everyone in Belgium was impressed by him, not least Morten Olsen (back then coach of the Danish national senior team), who lived in Belgium and had come to watch the matches. He said, 'It’s a joy for football lovers to watch him play.' It was only a matter of time before we could bring him into the main national team setup, and we did so at the Under-17 level," says Holm.
Holm underlines, however, that to be included in the national team setup, you had to earn it not only on the pitch, and Mor had a lot of challenges in that regard.
"Throughout that period, I was in very close contact with Lyngby, because he had an enormous temper and was hard to manage on a day-to-day basis. But to quote the late national team coach Rickard Moller-Nielsen (the man who steered Denmark to the EURO title in 1992), 'those players who we struggle to control', the opponents also struggle to control, so we tried to keep his temper at bay", says Holm, who labels Mor as one of the five biggest talents he has ever worked with.
"We had many long and good conversations with him, and he actually understood it well. He wanted to work on it, too, but his temper was something deep within him. He wanted to play all the time. And no one was allowed to say anything to him, because then he would just boil over", says Holm.
Holm underlines that Mor's temper would often let him down on and off the pitch.
"Already early in his career he got a lot of red cards. Opponents couldn't catch him, so they would bring him down, and then he would take off like a rocket and retaliate. I can easily understand that you get frustrated, but many players have learned to handle those frustrations, and he really struggled in that area.
"I went up to see a match with Lyngby where he was on the bench. I left 10 minutes before the end, and once he saw that I had left, he got up from the bench and went to empty the trash can in the changing room. Lyngby called me immediately, and he was forced to apologise".
After making a splash for himself later at FC Nordsjaelland, Mor was signed by Borussia Dortmund in June 2016 but fell out with coach Thomas Tuchel after refusing to do extra running drills, and the same thing happened a year later with Juan Carlos Unzue at Celta Vigo. Today Holm suggests that poor advisors may have accelerated the negative turn of events in Mor's career.
"Whether the responsibility lies with him, his advisor, or elsewhere - that remains an open question. But I do think his career could have been managed better. And looking at him and the issue of patience: I suspect he was constantly aiming for the very top tier, regardless of whether it made sense for the stage of his career he was actually at."
On the international stage, Mor in 2016 chose to play for the Turkish national team, a decision that frustrated Holm. "The Turks promised him that he would be selected to play at the EURO 2016, and then he chose them. It almost brings tears to my eyes. He should have remained with us. We could have helped him. He has gotten 15 caps with Turkey, but he could have been a huge player for Denmark."
Mor is 29 years old now, and despite all the problems, Holm really wishes his old protege to succeed. "I loved working with these unusual types of youngsters, and he was a good kid. There is still time for him to revive his career and earn a last big contract", ends Holm.
NEC Nijmegen will face Bodo/Glimt at home at the Goffertstadium at 21:00 CET tonight in the first leg of their clash in the play-off round for the Champions League.
Follow the game with Flashscore here!
Svend Bertil Frandsen has been Senior News Editor for Flashscore News in Denmark since September 2022. He has formerly worked for UEFA and FIFA and is a former tennis pro. He specializes in news around football, tennis, badminton and handball. You can also follow him on LinkedIn.
