Ali Sami Yen Stadium

Ali Sami Yen Stadium was the home of the football club Galatasaray S.K. in Istanbul, Turkey, from 1964 to 2010. It is named after the founder of the club, Ali Sami Yen. The stadium had a capacity of 23,477 and was situated in the Mecidiyeköy quarter of the Şişli district, at the center of the European side of the city.

Football was first played in Istanbul by some British players in a field known as Papazın Çayırı in the area that is now the site of Fenerbahçe's Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium. With the opening of the Taksim Stadı in 1921, which was located inside the courtyard of the Ottoman era Taksim Artillery Barracks built by Sultan Abdülmecid I in the 1840s; the surrounding walls of which were transformed into tribunes. This new stadium that became the new football headquarters.
In the urban development of 1939, the military barracks in which the Taksim Stadium was located was demolished in 1940. The stadium was thus lost.
In this period, Fenerbahçe bought the land encompassing Papazın Çayırı and built the Fenerbahçe Stadium, while the Beşiktaş Club moved into the Şeref Stadı, located in the area where today’s Çırağan Palace stands.
It was Galatasaray that experienced the biggest problem with the use of a stadium in that period.
The first steps to overcome this problem were taken in the initial years of the 1930s. The first initiative to acquire a plot of land for Galatasaray was in 1933, when the then president of the club Ali Haydar Barşal showed an interest in a mulberry orchard in Mecidiyeköy.

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