Opening
When a football club goes to Turkey, the imagination immediately offers a beach, sunshine and a lazy pre-season routine. But Isparta is not about a holiday. It is mid-altitude, 1,035 metres above sea level, where the body quickly learns that oxygen is not a free option.
130 kilometres north of Antalya, in the Lake District, 220,000 residents and no sea. Mass tourism does not come here — it goes to Antalya, Cappadocia, Pamukkale. Only those who need to reach Isparta do: botanists, perfumers and now Baltika's footballers. The city lives on roses: 65 per cent of the world's rose oil is produced here. The scent your wife dabs on her wrist from a Chanel or Dior bottle physically comes from the same hectares Talalaev's players will soon be sprinting across. Thirty kilometres away is the village of Kuyucak, Turkey's lavender Provence. All of it is within reach of the training base and none of it matters. Just a pretty side effect.
