Karşıyaka

Ogün Altıparmak spent eight years in Karşıyaka's colours before Fenerbahçe took him, and it was there, not in İzmir, that he became the Süper Lig's first-ever top scorer, in 1970-71. At Karşıyaka he had managed 36 goals in 129 appearances; the number that followed him was the 32 caps and six goals he later collected for Turkey. The club that shaped him is the oldest sports club in İzmir and the first founded anywhere in Anatolia, registered on 1 November 1912 by six men who had pooled their money for a football and started kicking it around a field called Omiros Tarlası. The date stuck hard enough that the club still sings it: the anthem is titled 'Yıl 1912', and every 19 December is marked as World Karşıyakalılar Day.

Locally the club answers to 'Kaf Sin Kaf', the Arabic-script reading of the letters K.S.K., and to '35 buçuk', after the district's old postal code of 35.5. Green stands for Islam, red for Turkishness, and both colours have flown at Alsancak Stadium, a 15,000-seat ground the club is set to leave behind for a new stadium at Yalı Mevkii, due in 2029.

Karşıyaka has never lifted the Süper Lig or the Turkish Cup; its football silverware belongs to an earlier era, three İzmir Futbol Ligi titles before the national league existed at all, in 1925-26, 1951-52 and 1958-59. It is the basketball section, twice Turkish champion, that carries the club's major honours now. What football still has is the derby with Göztepe. On 16 May 1981 that fixture, then a Second Division game, drew a crowd the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the largest ever recorded for that tier: 80,000.