Albert Camus was a goalkeeper in his youth. Years later he would describe the part that sport, and the modest team he played for, had in what he learned about morality and the obligations of man.
It is no accident that a football team held such a place in a writer's memory for so many years. Because there is labor on the pitch, and ambition, and a sense of justice. There is covering for a teammate's mistake. There is also laying your own mistake on his shoulders. Football does not explain all of life's complexity. But our ways of living together it sometimes lays bare, in a single play, for all to see.
The real spark of this essay was struck in the stands. On the evening of 25 September 2026 I went to the Türkiye-France match at Kocaeli Stadium with my daughter Deniz, who does not know much about football. For ninety minutes she watched the pitch with her own eyes, consulting no statistics. On the way out I asked for her impressions. "Only that one kid ran his heart out," she said. The kid was Arda.
One more scene from that match is carved into my memory. We left the pitch that night beaten 1-0. Mbappé had scored in the 54th minute. A few minutes later he clutched his knee and went down, and in the 59th he left the game. I saw it from the stands: the first to run to the French star was his club teammate inside the rival shirt, Arda. Mbappé's pain could be read in Arda's eyes, as if he felt the ache in his own knee. The Spanish press must have seen the same thing, for the daily AS carried Arda's "tense and worried" state into its headline. Rivalry is one thing, humanity another. That night the stands taught me two lessons: one about effort, the other about compassion.
Even the eye of a child who knows not one term of football's language had picked out effort first. That is what I have been thinking for years while watching Arda Güler. In some of the passes that leave that left foot I see more than a good footballer's skill: a mind that notices what a teammate can do, opens space for that ability, and turns its own gift into shared success. We need that kind of mind in companies, in schools, in government, and on a ship's bridge. When I say the world needs more Arda Gülers, this is what I mean: an understanding that grows a person together with others.
The Shirt a Boy Asked For
On 10 February 2018, at a Gençlerbirliği-Trabzonspor match in Ankara, a thin boy was collecting balls on the touchline. He was still watching football's great stage from its edge. The boy who asked four players for a shirt that day, and got none, was named Arda Güler. Watching the wounded look the cameras caught still stings today.
For an adult, a shirt is a garment taken off after ninety minutes. For a child, that same shirt is a door into the world of his dreams. The smallest token from someone he admires can make him feel worth seeing. Perhaps that is why some childhood joys and some childhood hurts last a lifetime: inside the thing we wanted that day hides a longing, not yet named, to be accepted.
There is one more sentence in Arda's journey. As he was being sent off from Ankara to Istanbul, his elder sister leaned to his ear and said, "Arda, you need to fill that fridge." Telling this memory in his letter of 8 May 2025, Arda returned to the present at the end of those lines. His answer was four words: "The fridge is full."
What a heavy sentence for a child to carry on his shoulders.
At that age a mind should hold friends, games, the shirt he dreams of wearing. Making a living belongs to the world of grown-ups. But life is like that. Sometimes it knocks on a child's door far too early. A football stops being a toy and starts carrying a household's tomorrow. That is what touches the heart in Arda's story: walking toward one of the biggest stages in the world, he carried on his back both the warmth and the weight of that home.
In Madrid, a master stood beside this boy: Luka Modrić. In his letter Arda told how he could not address him by name alone. To the hero of his childhood he could not say a bare "Luka," so he attached our beautiful Turkish word to it: Luka abi. He taught his teammates that the word means big brother. The locker room loved it so much that before long everyone was greeting one another with it in the morning. And the youngest of the squad became, in his own words, the locker room's youngest abi: Arda abi.
A single word from a boy from Ankara had settled into the locker room of the biggest club in the world. Think of it: this too is a pass. Arda brought there not only the craft in his left foot but the upbringing of the house he grew up in. Because in our culture abi is more than a form of address. It carries looking out for someone, giving a hand, thinking of your younger sibling first at the table. And Modrić honored the title to the very end. He looked out for him on the pitch. In the middle of matches he would turn and whisper: "Hey Arda, this is just the position for you." Through the bench days he kept the boy's patience alive and worked into that young heart, little by little, the confidence that he belonged in the game. Even parting did not end the brotherhood: months later, on a Clásico night when a lost ball turned into a goal and sat heavy on Arda, according to the Spanish press the phone that rang from Milan belonged, once again, to Luka abi. Mistakes like this happen at your age, he was saying. Stay calm. A bond built on one word was proving, on the pitch, the claim at the top of this essay: a person grows by growing others.
Then came a farewell scene. In footage recorded on the way back to Madrid on 11 July 2025, Modrić took the shirt off his back, held it out to Arda, and embraced him.
The boy who once asked footballers for a shirt and went home empty-handed was now holding his master's shirt in his arms. Between those two images there is more than a footballer who grew up. There is also the courage one human being can give another. Sometimes opening the way for a young person means, before any long advice, making him feel seen and trusted. Part of the beauty of that embrace lives right there. The waiting that began in Ankara found its answer, seven years later, in a master's arms.
A Pass Is a Promise
What I love most in Arda's game is that he builds this trust on the pitch as well. A good pass is not completed by sending the ball from one point to another. It takes into account a teammate's run, his pace, his strike, the instant he will decide. For a few seconds, the one who gives the pass and the one who receives it lean on what the other can do. One man's vision finds its answer in another man's movement.
On 4 May 2025, in the match Real Madrid won 3-2 against Celta Vigo, Arda scored one goal and set up Mbappé for another. What he said afterward read like a summary of his character: "I don't think the assist to Mbappé was great. He made a great run and I just found him very well."
The beautiful pass was his. But he also saw the labor that made the pass possible. Telling of his success, he made room for his teammate and handed the praise to the runner. Humility is sometimes understood exactly this way: knowing your own worth while granting the worth of the one beside you. A virtue we miss so much in business, in politics, in our daily lives.
The same bond was there in the goal against Romania on 26 March 2026. Arda's pass behind the defense was finished by Ferdi Kadıoğlu. After the match Arda told the story: "Ferdi abi made an incredible run." They had talked at halftime. Ferdi had told him that the moment Arda got the ball, he would make the run. The goal was born of that pact between two friends. Notice the detail, too: the boy who has a Luka abi in Madrid says Ferdi abi in the national team. Respect is this player's mother tongue.
What made that pass beautiful was this conversation as much as its distance. Trusting a teammate's movement had begun with listening to his word. That is why the ball can also be read as a measured letter left behind the defense: I heard what you said. I know you will run. I trust you.
That partnership was one link in the national team's journey. Five days later in Pristina, a 1-0 win sealed by Kerem Aktürkoğlu's 53rd-minute goal carried Türkiye to the World Cup after twenty-four years. How many children's eyes lit up in this country's living rooms that night, we cannot know. But this we do know: behind every great joy stand small promises people have given one another.
Perhaps the most elegant example of this philosophy came days before the World Cup. In the Macedonia match on 2 June 2026, Arda came on in the 62nd minute. Eight minutes later, receiving the ball with his back to goal, with a single backheel he laid it into the path of İrfan Can Kahveci breaking free. Kahveci's pass was finished by Barış Yılmaz. The goal was written to someone else's name. The larger share of the applause went to that backheel. Because sometimes a single touch tells a player's whole philosophy: even with the goal behind you, you can see your friend.
Looking back at a success, we usually search for a single hero. Yet behind the result stand countless labors completing one another: the striker's finish, the playmaker's vision, the defender's tackle, the keeper's save. Being a team means these contributions making one another possible. Being a society asks for a similar memory: applauding the one who makes the final touch without forgetting those who opened the road until that moment.
Ambition, Tested by Shared Success
The example of Vinícius Júnior may give us an occasion to think about the limits of ambition. On 26 October 2025, his reaction to being substituted against Barcelona, and his walk straight down the tunnel, set off a controversy that overshadowed the win. Yet in that same match he had played an important part in building the winning goal. Three days later he publicly apologized to the fans, his teammates, and the club.
The behavior can of course be criticized. We have all had moments when, in the middle of a shared task, we laid our own hurt in front of everyone. Giving your place to a teammate is part of a team's order, too. And yet from a single incident we cannot draw final verdicts about a man's whole character, or about the love people feel for him. If we are looking for a good social example, we must also leave a door open to admitting a mistake and correcting the behavior.
Indeed, the Monaco match on 20 January 2026 offered a very different Vinícius scene. In an attack Camavinga started, Arda passed into Vinícius's run. Vinícius then set up Mbappé for the goal. On a night Real Madrid won 6-1, Vinícius was named man of the match with two assists and a goal.
That night Arda and Vinícius were no longer opposites. They were links in the same beautiful play. The goal was written to Mbappé, the final pass to Vinícius. Arda's contribution sat one link earlier in the move. The touch that stays faint on the statistics sheet was the touch that built the result.
Life has such people, too. The one speaking at the podium is visible. The teacher who grows a student's courage, the nurse on the night shift, the chief engineer down in the engine room are less visible. Yet what keeps common life standing is these labors adding onto one another. When we write success only to the most visible person, we fall short of understanding how a society carries itself.
Nor should we, to understand Arda, turn him into a player who has given up his own claim. Taking a shot is also taking responsibility. Sometimes that courage is exactly what the team needs. One of the first to remind him was his master: in a preseason match, Modrić chided his apprentice for shying away from a shot in a good position, telling him not to fear that strike when the chance was there, and not to think only of the pass. Luka abi's advice also sets the scales of this essay: our concern is not to sanctify the pass but to find the measure. To use a talent at the right moment for the right purpose. Ambition becomes a common force when it grows the contribution of others. When it covers the whole pitch, it dries up what the people beside you can do.
Leadership That Raises Others
Émile Durkheim's concept of organic solidarity will help us read these scenes at the scale of society. In modern life, people doing different jobs need one another. Examining this mutual dependence born of the division of labor, Durkheim also shows how unjust and lawless relations corrode solidarity.
The keeper, the playmaker, and the striker do not do the same job. Most of the time they cannot fill one another's place either. Their success lies in bringing their different abilities together. Governing a society well likewise requires bringing together the knowledge of the teacher, the physician, the engineer, the worker, and the seafarer. When we turn people into extensions of a single will, we lose their distinct contribution.
Mary Parker Follett thought of power in management as a capacity developed together. Relations that combine different people's contributions productively give birth to a capability beyond the sum of what each holds alone.
Carry this thought into Arda's game and you see it: when the pass leaves his foot, the work is not yet finished. It continues in a teammate's run, in his strike, in the result written to the team's name. For a manager the measure is the same: do the people working with him think better at his side, act more bravely, become more capable?
The servant leadership Robert Greenleaf named in 1970 places this question at the center of management. Greenleaf's test is plain: are the people being served growing, becoming freer? Are those with the least also receiving a share of the gain?
Picture a manager. He is glad when an employee finds a better idea than his own. Telling of a success, he names the people who did the work. When he decides wrongly, he takes the responsibility. He wants to leave behind an institution that will run well after him. Such a person's authority does not need the people around him to shrink. On the contrary, their growing strong is his very work.
A small detail in Arda's letter gives this thought a human warmth. His father once gave him a notebook for his birthday. Arda first wrote his dreams in it, then, at his father's wish, added to the notebook the names of some twenty people whose labor had touched his life. In the same letter he writes that whoever you are, you cannot succeed alone.
How beautiful, to write other people's names into the notebook where you write your dreams.
That notebook is a memory of success. As a person rises, the labor of the teacher who first noticed him, of the coach who gave him time, of the loved one who would not let him quit is not lost. Humility is sometimes this: not erasing those names while telling your own story. If our admiration for Arda's talent has turned into such a warm love, ask me and I will say the largest share belongs to details like these.
The letter's title already says it all: "A Letter to the Children of My Country." Arda wrote those lines not as a victory speech but as a map left for those coming behind. One of its finest sentences is this: "I know I am the great hope of Turkish football, but I do not want to be the only one." His concern, he adds, is to show the way to the new generation. And he closes the letter with a call to the children: grab a ball and run outside. You will feel like you own the world. Here is the core of the worldview this essay defends: not to be a star, but to make stars shine. Arda says it not as a theory but as a way of living. And he is only twenty-one.
One more scene. On the night his hometown Bolu named him its 2025 athlete of the year, a children's choir took the stage wearing Arda shirts. As the little ones sang, his sister Nurgül and his mother Serap could not hold back their tears. The sentence his father Ümit Güler spoke that evening is also the main idea of this essay: "My greatest happiness is that he be remembered for his character more than his success." What a noble wish for a father. What a sound compass for a society.
A Shared Mind on the Bridge
The writer of these lines spent part of his life on a ship's bridge and part of it in courtrooms. The first lesson the sea taught me is this: no ship reaches harbor by one person alone. A safe passage leans at once on the judgment on the bridge, the labor in the engine room, the watchfulness on deck, and the preparation ashore. A captain's experience turns into the ship's common strength only to the degree that he can bring these different contributions together.
Bridge Resource Management, known at sea as BRM, rests on the combined and effective use of people, equipment, and information for safe navigation. Communication, cooperation, and coordination are at the heart of this approach.
The youngest officer of the watch must be able to speak of the danger he sees without hesitation. The pilot's local knowledge must meet the master's experience. Listening to a warning does not weaken authority. It sets the decision on firmer ground. Duties and responsibilities are defined, but knowledge cannot be one person's monopoly. Good leadership at sea means building a climate where everyone can lay out what they know without fear. Maritime literature has a name for that climate: just culture. For years I have rendered it in Turkish as insaf kültürü, a culture of fairness. A blame culture finds a culprit after the accident, punishes him, and buries the real failure of the system. A just culture separates the honest mistake from the willful violation, and learns from the mistake. I examined the concept in my piece From a Culture of Blame to a Culture of Fairness (DenizHaber, 27 December 2011), republished on 20 September 2025 after a recent casualty. The IMO's 2010 Manila amendments likewise brought leadership and teamwork training into the mandatory framework of the STCW.
The centuries-old institution of general average in maritime law opens another door onto shared responsibility. Extraordinary sacrifices and expenditures, made deliberately and reasonably to save the property engaged in a common maritime adventure from peril, are shared, under settled rules, among all who hold an interest in the voyage. In the storm, part of the cargo is given to the sea so that the ship and the rest may be saved. Afterward that loss is apportioned among all who were saved.
Keeping its legal limits, we may carry this principle into social life as an analogy: whoever shoulders a burden for the common rescue must not be left alone with that burden. Solidarity requires not only asking people for sacrifice but also seeing the cost of the sacrifice. "We are in the same boat" is not a consolation. It is a commitment.
In a ship's safe arrival there are countless right decisions that the families waiting ashore will never learn of. A detail one person noticed in time, a check another carried out with care, a warning a third chose to hear. The seafarer's prayer is short: to come home. And the plainest meaning of solidarity is this: to deliver one another, safe and sound, to the people we love.
We need this understanding on the shore side of shipping at least as much as on the bridge. Think of a harbor master's office. It holds powers of inspection and penalty. But its real strength lies in growing the safety culture along its coast. A harbor master who answers the captain's call, who does not withhold local knowledge, who writes a mistake first into the book of lessons rather than the book of fines, is the invisible playmaker of that port. For our chambers of shipping the measure is no different. A chamber's standing is gauged not by the size of its office but by how far it opens the way for its members. Managers who share the podium with a young seafarer, who do not cut off the most junior member in a committee, who on election night can say "our community won" instead of "I won." They are the Arda Gülers of the maritime family. Let us speak plainly: the common question beneath the topics the sector debates these days (inspections, administrative fines, service regulations) is this: will we use authority like a pass, or like a shot?
Filling Society's Table
Let us ask the question for Türkiye from here: how do we bring out the human worth in our hands? How do we put the teacher's knowledge to work in the classroom, the engineer's skill in the shipyard, the young researcher's curiosity in the laboratory? Noticing talent matters, but giving it room and trust is also the work of governance. The idea of the assisting leader gains its meaning exactly here. Nor is the idea foreign to us: we are the country of imece, our old custom of shared labor, and of the ahi guild tradition. We are children of a tradition that never approved of the one who plays only for himself while his neighbor stands by.
For this understanding to last, good will is not enough, institutions are needed. Rules that protect merit, open decision processes, accountability, and the right to object. A manager who opens the way for people is precious. The order that keeps the way open after him carries that worth into the future.
Let us also know the limit of the football analogy. A society is not a team with a single goal. Citizens have different dreams, values, and choices of life. Good governance protects these differences within a common life. One of the hard tests of leadership that strengthens people is keeping safe the rights and the voice of those who do not join it.
Amartya Sen's understanding of development carries this thought one step further: a society's progress is measured by people's real opportunity to live the lives they value. Education, health, and freedom stand at the center of this approach because they hand a person the helm of his own life.
That is why we cannot look at the fridge story with emotion alone. A family's hope of livelihood hanging on a child's extraordinary success is a heavy responsibility resting on all our shoulders. While applauding Arda for standing by his family, we must also wish that no child be forced to rescue his family. Not every child will make it to Real Madrid. But every child has the right to eat well, to study, and to look to tomorrow with confidence.
Arda is a young man. He will make mistakes, his game will change, his role in Madrid will take shape over time. Turning him into a flawless symbol would add our expectations to the burden of his own story. The worth of the lesson we draw from his game should not depend on his always acting rightly. Multiplying in our own lives the beautiful examples he has shown us is our task.
The boy who asked for a shirt is today a footballer millions know. A hope once carried for a single household now touches other children's dreams. The best conclusion to draw from this story is not only to applaud Arda's rise but to build, together, the conditions in which others can rise too.
The world needs more Arda Gülers: teachers who grow their students' courage, captains and harbor masters who can trust a young colleague with the helm, chamber presidents who count opening the way for their members as the real office, managers who listen to what their people know, politicians who carry society's possibilities into more people's lives. People who see the labor that makes shared success possible, who can share the applause, and who can shoulder the responsibility.
The sentence an elder sister once whispered into her little brother's ear now reminds us all of a larger duty: to fill society's table. For that, we cannot expect extraordinary heroics from our children. A safe life, and time to dream, is what we owe them, all of us together.
Let children be able to dream without having to rescue their family's future. Let them run after the ball simply because they are children. Just like Deniz, who, in the stands of Kocaeli that evening, spotted in an instant the kid who ran his heart out.