Eyüpspor

Eyüpspor grew out of Eyüpsultan, the district hugging the upper shore of the Golden Horn. The club took shape there in 1919, and the purple and yellow it has carried since.

A regional title in 1933/34 was followed by long stretches outside the top flight, and it took until 2020/21 for Eyüpspor to win the third tier and end a 37-year absence from the upper levels of Turkish football. The club won the second tier outright and reached the Süper Lig for the first time in its history, finishing that debut season in sixth place.

The move up the table has come with a move around the city's stadiums. Eyüpspor played its first Süper Lig season at the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Stadyumu, known locally as Kasımpaşa Stadyumu, before the club was set to shift to the Esenyurt Necmi Kadıoğlu Stadyumu, a considerably smaller ground holding 4,274. Both are a step up from the old Eyüp Stadyumu, where the club played much of its lower-division history in front of just over 2,000 people.

Geography still decides its rivalries. Kasımpaşa and Fatih Karagümrük sit on the same inlet, and matches against them are known in Istanbul as the Haliç derbisi, the derby of the Golden Horn, run between three clubs separated by little more than a bridge.

Eyüpspor has rarely been a club that exported names to the wider game. It has built its reputation instead as a place where local players are developed rather than passed through on their way somewhere bigger — a reputation that outlasted every relegation and return.