Aydınspor are one of those nebulous Turkish sports clubs that covers every game under the sun, plus has a half decent football team. They formed in 1966, and spent most of their career in the second tier of Turkish football. They had a brief three-season stint in the top flight in the early 1990s before their fortuned took a dive and they found themselves back in the amateur leagues for a season in 2009. However, they've dragged themselves back on their feet, and are now back in the third league and challenging for a return to the division that looked after them for some 36 years.
They come from the city of
Aydın, a city known as Anthea to the ancient Greeks, where it was one of the largest cities in antiquity,
Tralles to the Romans and Byzantines and
Güzelhisar to the Turks of the Middle Ages. It's a big agricultural town that is also famous for another, slightly unlikely sport - camel wrestling!
They play in the 13,500 capacity Aydın Adnan Menderes stadium, and count Algerian stars Djamel Amani and Tahar Cherif El-Ouazzani as their most famous alumni. The four leaf clover on their crest represents the four teams who were merged to create the club, while the stripes of the shirt are said to resemble the black olives and the plain white cotton that are farmed prolifically in the area. Their greatest day though came on 26th August 1990 when they beat Fenerbahce 6-1 in Istanbul. So proud of that game are they that you can still buy t-shirts that commemorate it to this day.
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