Nani and the Infinite Sadness of His Turkish Football Airport Welcome

Nani receiving a rapturous welcome in Istanbul after signing for Fenerbahce

You know you're in the midst of the transfer season when you start to see the same little rituals that crop up each year. Infinitely more entertaining than the swap deal that will never happen or the latest Liverpool fire sale is the Turkish airport video.

Nani is the latest to go through this strange baptism, and while doing so he displays all the usual emotions: bewilderment, fear, anxiety, 'What the fuck am I doing with my life; I should've just become a plumber like Dad'; the whole gamut is run.

Read – QPR and Me: Growing Up with One of English Football's Strangest Clubs

That expression, frozen like a porno debutant, betrays a lot more besides the obvious terror. Perhaps, deep down, he is excited. Yes, the money will be good, but Nani is a man who has a statue of himself in his living room; he doesn't necessarily need any more money. You get the sense he's a man who's always been about the glory, which – in the lucre-driven world of modern football – now seems weirdly admirable and old-fashioned. And here he is, fresh off the plane like Ringo Starr in New York '64, getting typhooned with genuine adoration and in with a chance of winning trophies in one of the greatest cities in the world.

Not that we should downplay the sadness in all this. This isn't like the two classics of the genre, Darius Vassell at Ankaragucu and Kenny Miller at Bursaspor. Nani at his best is at least an exciting player, one capable of scoring great goals and who's just had a good season, rather than a workmanlike British jobber with a face like a melted welly.

– – –

If you're reading this, you'll probably enjoy VICE Sports' film about St Pauli, Germany's progressive, punk football club

– – –

But while Miller and Vassell rocked up in Turkey to get away from the derision of British fans and to bank cheques, Nani is probably there only because he has to be. Last year, Nani was scoring goals at his boyhood club, helping them fight for the league. But Sporting Lisbon's business model doesn't allow for the permanent romantic returns of heroes past on huge wages, so Nani's out of the team for financial reasons, because they've already got a teenager from Dundee United they need to showcase to make a big profit on.

This is the sadness at the heart of the annual Turkish airport welcome video: the contrast between the fans' adoration and the player's confusion and sadness at ending up in what is, in terms relative to the continent's major domestic leagues, a footballing backwater. Yes, there are some great players in the Süper Lig, but if you're telling me the idea of Robin van Persie getting greyer by the minute in a midweek fixture against Konyaspor doesn't make you slightly sad, you're either Dirk Kuyt or inhuman.

@Callum_TH

More from VICE:

Laughing at Man United is One of the Best Things in Football

The Downfall of David Moyes: An 'Accidental' Brian Clough

Not All Premier League Plastic Fans are Idiots