Turkey’s Super Lig is currenty playing it’s 51st season. The reigning champions are Galatasaray.
The Big 3 of Turkey are all clubs from Istanbul…
Fenerbahce plays on the Asian side of the Bosporus Strait. Their name means “lighthouse garden”. The club draws extremely well (39,500 in ’07), and are a fixure in the Champions League. Their manager , since 2006, has been Brazilian great Zico. In the 07/08 CL, Fenerbahce finally advanced to the 2nd Round, where they beat Sevilla; they then lost to Chelsea in the Quarter-Finals. {Click here, for Wikipedia’s page on Fenerbahce.}
Galatasaray and Besiktas are both on the European side of the Bosporous. Besiktas draws much higher than Galatasaray (in 06/07, Besiktas drew 26,200; Galatasaray drew 16,300). But Galatasary are the more successful club. Their 17 titles equals Fenerbahce for the most in Turkey. The only other club to win the crown is the Black Sea club Trabzonspor, from northeast Anatolia. But they last won the title in 1984.
Below are two charts, both originally from Wikipedia. I added a column for the last year the club won the title. I kept the clubs’ names in Wikipedia’s font, so the ligatures could be seen in the letters in the names of clubs such as Fenerbahce, Besiktas, and Genclerbirgli (my keyboard doesn’t have this capability).
The winner of the Turkish Cup gets to play in the UEFA Cup 1st Round. The cup final is a two-legged affair; the 3rd round is grouped into a round-robin style.
The 2008 Turkish Cup was won by the central Anatolian club Kayserispor. They defeated Ankara-based Genclerbirgli on penalties, 11-10, to win it. [One note: In 1967, Altay SK won the cup over Goztepe SK via a coin toss.]
Here is the Turkish Super Lig table {Click here (Soccer Stats site) }.
Here is a site called Turkey (Turkiye) football (soccer) Column and News {Click here}. The Thursday, September 18 post covers the 4 Turkish clubs currently playing in Europe…Fenerbahce in the Champions League; and Galatasaray, Besiktas, and Kayserispor in the UEFA Cup.
Thanks to the site, http://kizilyildiz.blogspot.com/, which links up to this site.
Thanks to the European Football Statistics site {Click here}, for the attendance figures, such as they are. Hopefully, there will be some gate figures reported for this season, so I can make a more up-to-date attendance map next spring.
