Brad Friedel: The American who lived Türkiye's most explosive football feud

Brad Friedel played his college ball at UCLA and had a stint at Liverpool before a longer and seriously fruitful one at Blackburn Rovers. He also stopped shots for Aston Villa and for Tottenham Hotspur, where in his final season he ran into a guy named Mauricio Pochettino. The goalkeeper, who was capped 82 times for the U.S. Men’s National Team, got a front-row seat to the Argentine’s methods when he came in and transformed the club, and his faith has never wavered that Pochettino will deliver now as head coach of the American team.

We talked about all that when Friedel joined the show this Thanksgiving week, but we also got into a fascinating early chapter of his career. In 1995, he went off to Istanbul to play for Graeme Souness at Galatasaray. Along the way, he got a true taste of one of the world’s most combustible football derbies, Galatasaray against Fenerbahce, the latest edition of which will play out this coming Monday.

Friedel talked the derby, his times with Brian Clough and Kevin Keegan, and a bit about life in Istanbul.

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