The Champions League, where dreams are born and made into realities, 12 years ago this championship saw a fighter, a team that was born to win against the other European champions the past UEFA Europa League and UEFA Super Cup winner; Galatasaray, a Turkish professional football club based in the district of Sarıyer, in the European side of Istanbul, came back to reclaim their long lost legacy 12 years later. Galatasaray, 25-time Turkish Super League winners, started out their Champions League with a loud bang after losing 5-1 to Frankfurt, a team they expected to win with ease. There is a famous Turkish saying that goes, “If you don’t lose big, you can’t win big.” Galatasaray was matched up against British Giants, Liverpool. Liverpool, under Arne Slotts management, was one of the biggest and the most powerful teams to go up against, they had a way higher transfer budget, more and better players but there was one thing that Liverpool did not have to their advantage and that was the Ultras. The Ultras are very devout soccer fans, people that will fly out to countries just to go support their team in away games.
Galatasaray has an extensive group of ultra fans. The Galatasaray Ultras are known to fire fireworks all night just to keep the Liverpool players up before the games to throw them off. During the match the next day, Liverpool players were tired, sleepy and were doubtful of their own conditions and when they came into the Rams Park, the venue for the match they just realized last night was just the start. Before the match started, the stadium was reaching to decibels levels where Liverpool players had to use earplugs, they couldn’t speak or hear each other and 2 hours later Liverpool arrived the match procedure has started and the teams lined up for the match and Galatasaray a team that lost 5-1 to Frankfurt was owning the field against Liverpool, a Premier League giant and after relentless attacks from both parties Galatasaray did a swift counter attack passing the ball to their left winger and then a Liverpool player fouled him in the goal box causing the ref to give a penalty to Galatasaray. Galatasaray did not miss on that chance and appointed their best player VIctor James Osimhen to shoot the penalty and Osimhen showed the world why he was a top 3 striker in the world and scored that penalty against one of the best goalkeepers ever, Allison Becker. After the penalty Galatasaray went on to play a more defensive type of soccer and it worked after relentless tries of Liverpool the match ended at 90+9 and the Turkish Giants once again won against Premier League Giants.
Currently after match day 4 Galatasaray is number 9 out of 36 in the championship in a place where it couldn’t even imagine to be for the past 12 years after the legendary 2012-2013 line up of Galatasaray achieved to get to quarter finals in the Champions League. The Lions showed it still had fangs and it could still hunt birds. We still have 4 more match days left to go and the Lions enemies are just going to get even more powerful starting out with Union Saint Gilloise, Atletico Madrid, A.S. Monaco and lastly ending with the current standing Premier League champions, Manchester City. It is not the first time Galatasaray faces a British giant just like with the match against Liverpool Galatasaray also faced Manchester United in 2023, they faced Tottenham in 2024 and they faced Liverpool in 2025 and they won all of those matches and now Galatasaray’s next British contender is Manchester City and the Lions will face them in January, 2026. And last but not least:
- What do you think about the top 10 standings right now ?
- How do you like the current format of the UCL?
- What do you think could be different?
- Who is your top player in respective positions?
- Which team do you think will be the Champions?
