Rizespor U19

On the No. 3 synthetic pitch at the Mehmet Cengiz Tesisleri, a ground with no seats and no listed capacity, Emirhan Topçu and Yasin Çakmak once trained as teenagers before one moved on to Beşiktaş and the Turkey national side and the other to Fenerbahçe. That is the function of Çaykur Rizespor's under-19 side: a feeder for the first team, not a competition meant to be watched from the stands.

The team, known locally as Genç Atmacalar — the Young Eagles — wears the same green and blue the senior club adopted in 1968, colours read in Rize as the tea fields inland and the Black Sea at the edge of town. Çaykur Rizespor itself dates to 1953; the youth side has never had a separate founding of its own, growing instead out of the club's academy structure.

Beyond Topçu and Çakmak, the academy has pushed Evren Kürkçü, Mustafa Yılmaz and several others into professional contracts, and it has run development projects carrying Mesut Özil's involvement.

Its derbies are the region's own: against Trabzonspor in the Karadeniz Derbisi, and against Giresunspor in the Doğu Karadeniz Derbisi.