Galatasaray Spor Kulubu (Turkish pronunciation: [ɡaɫatasaˈɾaj ˈspoɾ kulyˈby], Galatasaray Sports Club) is a professional football club based on the European side of the city of Istanbul in Turkey. It is the association football branch of the larger Galatasaray Sports Club of the same name, itself a part of the Galatasaray Community Cooperation Committee which includes Galatasaray High School where the football club was founded in October 1905 consisting entirely of student members. The team traditionally play in dark shades of red and yellow at home, with the shirts split down the middle between the two colours.
Galatasaray is one of three teams to have participated in all seasons of the Super Lig since 1959, following the dissolution of the Istanbul Football League.
Internationally, Galatasaray has won the UEFA Cup and UEFA Super Cup in 2000, becoming the first and only Turkish team to win a major UEFA competition. In the 1999–2000 season, the club achieved the rare feat of completing a treble by winning the Super Lig, the Turkish Cup, and the UEFA Cup in a single season. Galatasaray is also the only Turkish club to have been ranked first on the IFFHS World Rankings. According to the same international organization, Galatasaray is the best Turkish club of the 20th century, and the 60th most successful club in Europe.
Since 2011, the club's stadium is the 52,332-capacity Turk Telekom Stadium in Seyrantepe, Istanbul. Previously, the club played at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium, as well as a succession of other grounds in Istanbul, which included groundshares with Besiktas and Fenerbahce at the Taksim Stadium and Inonu Stadium.
The club has a long-standing rivalry with other major Istanbul teams, namely with Besiktas and Fenerbahce. The derby between Galatasaray and Fenerbahce is dubbed the Kitalar Arasi Derbi (English: Intercontinental Derby) due to the location of their headquarters and stadiums on the European (Galatasaray) and Asian (Fenerbahce) sides of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbu
This page also has a version in other languages : Галатасарай (russian)