As Mohamed Salah signed his two-year deal in front of tens of thousands of fans inside Trabzonspor's Papara Park stadium, the man putting his signature to the contract next to the Egyptian was struggling to keep the smile off his face. The reaction of supporters over the previous few days had already convinced club president Ertugrul Dogan he had pulled off a transfer coup. "He's the biggest Muslim footballer in the world.
He's an influential role model," he told BBC Sport Africa and BBC Turkish. "We held Salah's signing ceremony in front of 35,000 people. "It was clear from everything he did that he felt that love, and he told us as much too.
He thanked us." So how did Dogan persuade one of football's megastars to join a club without Champions League football and which has won the Turkish title only once since its heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s? Located on the Black Sea coast, the city of Trabzon sits near the border with Georgia in the north-east corner of Turkey. With a population of around 800,000 people, it is not even in the top 20 when it comes to the country's largest urban centres.
But Dogan claims it has something special. "I always say this about Trabzonspor and the city - we're the biggest one-club city in the world. "Salah asked us something like, 'Why should I choose Trabzonspor now?' "We told him about the city and said: 'You can be sure you will meet a group of supporters unlike any you have experienced before.
You'll feel the genuine love those people have inside them'." Born in January 1977, Dogan is himself a son of Trabzon. The businessman made his money through a series of different ventures, including real estate and hazelnuts, before moving into the energy sector and specialising in biofuels. He became Trabzonspor president in 2023, shortly after the club's most successful season in recent memory - having won the league title in 2021-22.
Under Dogan's watch, the Black Sea Storm, as the club is known, have finished third, seventh and third in the Super Lig. Last season they won the Turkish Cup under coach Fatih Tekke, who is now looking to guide his team into the Europa League, despite a 0-1 home defeat in the first leg of their play-off tie against Hungary's Ferencvaros. "We are working to make Trabzonspor and Trabzon itself a destination for talented young players from all over the world," said Dogan.
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