Haji Wright excelled in the Turkish Super Lig during his three years there and is reportedly on the radar of one of the league’s more prominent sides.
Besiktas has targeted Wright as a potential January transfer option, Turkish outlet Haberler reported Monday. Wright is currently in the middle of his third season with English second-tier side Coventry City.
The 27-year-old previously played in the Super Lig for Antalyaspor, originally joining on loan before making his move permanent. Wright scored 15 goals in 35 appearances on loan there before adding an additional 16 goals in 29 appearances following his permanent move from Danish club Sonderjyske.
Wright later joined Coventry City in August 2023 and has scored 40 goals in 101 appearances for the club. He helped the Sky Blues reach the FA Cup semifinals in 2024 and the promotion playoffs last season.
Despite a blistering start to the current EFL Championship campaign, Wright’s goals have dried up in recent months. His last goal for the Sky Blues came on October 4 against Sheffield Wednesday.
Since debuting for the U.S. men’s national team in 2022, Wright has contributed seven goals in 20 caps. He remains a candidate for Mauricio Pochettino’s World Cup roster next summer, fighting with Folarin Balogun and Ricardo Pepi in recent windows.
Besiktas sits fifth in the Turkish Super Lig standings on 29 points, 13 points behind league-leading Galatasaray.
He has already been there and done that. Focus on Coventry my man.
Besiktas is a $60M-a-year-in-payroll team…which is five times the budget Coventry has. Normally that’s good. The problem is, the Turkish league wildly overpays for its top players…and Whoo Baby is their league a train wreck right now. The entire Turkish third and fourth divisions got suspended, and something like 360 out of 560 refs were found to be placing bets – including on games they themselves worked. The whole thing came to a head when a second-division game ended without a single shot on goal by either team which was, well, obvious. Eventually even Erdogan’s monumentally corrupt government couldn’t look the other way, and when they finally did look, what crawled out from under the rug…like, wow, man. It was bad. Real bad. There’s match-fixing, and then there’s whatever was going on there. WWE-style soccer, basically.
I’d avoid Turkey like the plague right now. It’ll be decades before that league is ever right again…if it ever is.