Galatasaray Turkey Super League season was marked by Drogba won the 19th title.
Galatasaray sealed a record 19th Turkish league title by beating Sivasspor 4-2 in Istanbul.
Two goals from both Selcuk Inan and Burak Yilmaz gave Fatih Terim’s side victory with Sivasspor only able to respond though Kadir Bekmezci and Cihan Ozkara.
The victory, following Fenerbahce’s 2-0 defeat by Istanbul BB, took them ahead of the former’s 18 titles, and gives another title in another country to former Chelsea striker Didier Drogba.
Backed by two wonder strikes from the imperious Selçuk İnan, Galatasaray took home the league silverware for the second year in a row, defeating Sivas 4-2 in a match that was never in doubt and sending supporters across the country onto the streets in celebration, particularly to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square.
Drogba played from start to finish but playmaker Wesley Sneijder, signed from Inter Milan and like Drogba a Champions League winner, played just under an hour.
The prolific Burak Yilmaz, incidentally, this season now has 21 league goals, with Galatasaray are now 10 points clear at the top of the table with only two games left to play.
Manager Terim Terim was banned for nine matches in April for criticising the referee during a league game against Mersin Idmanyurdu and missed being on the bench for the triumph as a result of his suspension.
He at the time said he ‘will lead this team from the moon’ if he had to, so n tribute, several fans in the stadium were seen wearing space suits.
Needing only to match Fenerbahçe’s result in the Yellow Canaries’ concurrent match away to Istanbul BB, Hasan Şaş, who has taken over Galatasaray’s coaching duties for the rest of the season due to a nine-match suspension to regular bench boss Fatih Terim, sent out a full-strength side for the encounter, and the Lions attempted to put their nerves to rest early with a quick strike.
They were duly rewarded in the eighth minute when Selçuk, taking a break from his usual role as midfield playmaker, turned goalscorer with a textbook free kick from the edge of the area. Selçuk, who has made a habit of scoring on set plays from distance, found the perfect arc on his strike to thread the ball in at the near post despite the best efforts of Canadian international Milan Borjan in the Sivasspor goal.
Galatasaray created some insurance of their own soon after half-time, as Burak Yılmaz took a pass before unleashing an unstoppable shot past Borjan to tally his league-leading 21st goal of the season.
Though Burak scored with a whole 37 minutes remaining, the strike sealed Cim Bom’s 19th championship as far as the 52,000 supporters at the Türk Telekom Arena were concerned. But if the rest of the match was just a procession, it still had time for a crowning moment, with Selçuk doubling his tally after exquisitely volleying to himself over the head of his marker before sending another volley – this time of the blistering variety – into the roof of Borjan’s net in minute 60.
Amid the celebrations, there was time yet, too, for Burak to score a second past the unenviable Borjan, as well as two more fantastic strikes, this time from Sivas’ Kadir Bekmezci and Cihan Özkara when the match was no longer in doubt, but the goals were lost in the haze of the party atmosphere.
The Lions grabbed a hold of the league lead way back on Sept. 2, 2012, with a victory over Bursaspor and never relinquished it, despite the occasional wobble.
After splashing out so much cash on star signings Drogba and Wesley Sneijder, a league title was somewhat of a necessity for the Lions, thanks to a championship’s guarantee of at least 8 million euros in extra cash in the club’s coffers due to a berth in the group stages of the Champions League.
[adrotate banner=”46″]
