Rıdvan Yılmaz ended his 13-year spell at Beşiktaş in the last transfer window by making a switch to Rangers FC in order to play under Giovanni Van Bronckhorst at Ibrox.
The 21-year-old came up through the ranks of the Süper Lig side’s academy before he made it to their first team in 2019.
After spending three years with Beşiktaş’ senior team, he made a switch to Rangers in the summer. Sergen Yalçın was in charge of the Turkish club between January 2020 and December 2021.
The former Beşiktaş coach was the guest on Candaş Tolga Işık’s show, Az Önce Konuştum, where he admitted the left-back ended up at Rangers because of his decision to not hand Yılmaz regular game time during his time at the club.
Yalçın used the Rangers defender as an example to respond to a question as to why Arda Güler has not enjoyed more minutes under Jorge Jesus’ orders at Fenerbahçe this season.
“I don’t know about that part. Because I’m not in that area. I don’t know what’s going on in training, what’s going on in the locker room, what’s going on at the camp, what’s going on at the game. I can’t make the interpretation of it,” Yalçın was quoted as saying by Haber Global.
“If you look at the physiques of 17, 18-year-old footballers playing in Europe, they look like 38. For example, Rıdvan is very weak and Arda is weak. These are things that can be improved with 1-2 years of training and playing matches.”
“His manager knows him better than us. Commenting is not correct. His manager sees his training with him every day, sees his match, sees his food, sees his physical strength, maybe he makes other programs for him, we don’t know.”
“I didn’t play Rıdvan Yılmaz in the second half of the season we won the championship. Everyone kept asking, ‘Why isn’t Rıdvan playing?’ If he is not playing, there is a reason, friend.”
“If he went to Rangers today, he went because I didn’t play him… Because I played [him] at the right time. If I played [him] then, he would get a big reaction because he can’t play football, he was injured, his physical condition was bad. We protect the player by not playing, but we cannot explain it.”
Despite the switch to Ibrox, Yılmaz has not enjoyed regular game time at Rangers under Giovanni van Bronckhorst this term, where he has managed 376 minutes of action from seven matches in all competitions.
