The trip to Galatasaray was the best experience I have had on an Atlético away day.
01Sultanahmet → Yedikule
Along the old city walls
The route itself was breathtaking. Away supporters boarded coaches together in Sultanahmet Square, with the Blue Mosque and curious tourists behind us. The convoy then travelled west along the old walls of Constantinople. Those walls, invoked so often in history, moved past the windows section by section; their scale was extraordinary. Around Yedikule, the convoy turned north, gradually leaving the old city for modern Istanbul.
02Across Istanbul
The zero-contact system
The motorway was closed throughout. The only vehicles on it were the Atlético coaches. Each coach had a national-police motorcycle escort; traffic police controlled the junctions, and patrols relayed one another along the route. The formation was complete and highly coordinated. The Spanish supporters were visibly unused to this ‘VIP treatment’. The density of police was so high that it made people instinctively nervous.
This is the Turkish police’s zero-contact logic. Away supporters are managed as a unit that must be transported safely without contact. The route and procedure are fixed; from institutional design to execution on the ground, every possible source of friction is removed in advance. It is a standard process refined through repeated high-risk matches.
03Back at the Blue Mosque
A promise kept
In Spain or Britain, deploying the same number of officers and vehicles, with the authority to close roads, would cost seven figures and would be reserved for a national event or an extreme-risk situation. In Istanbul, it is standard practice for every European away following, regardless of club or nationality.
After the match, back in front of the Blue Mosque, I finished speaking with a police officer. His final words were simple: ‘In Türkiye, you are safe.’ It was neither romantic nor passionate, but I sincerely admired a promise that had been honoured in full.