Gürsel Aksel

Gürsel Aksel — Biography

Gürsel Aksel, nicknamed "Büyük Kaptan" (The Great Captain), was a midfielder regarded as one of the emblematic figures of Göztepe. He played for the club for 17 uninterrupted years, 11 of them as captain, and is its all-time appearance leader. He died in 1978 in a gas-station explosion in Rize while working as a manager, and his name lives on in the stadium in İzmir.

He moved from Manisa Gençlikspor to Göztepe in 1955; his brother Güler Aksel was the first footballer to sign a professional contract with the club. Until he retired in 1972 he made 390 appearances for Göztepe and scored, depending on the source, 79 to 81 goals, and the team won the Turkish Cup in 1968-69 and 1969-70. He had three caps for the Turkey senior national team, two for the U-21s and 12 for the Turkish Army national team.

After playing he turned to coaching: he managed Göztepe for the last four weeks of 1975-76, then worked at Orduspor, Boluspor and Çaykur Rizespor. On October 13, 1978, while in charge of Rizespor, he died in an explosion at a gas station, leaving a wife and two children. On November 23, 1978, the Göztepe stadium was named after him, and the Gürsel Aksel Stadium, built to replace the old ground demolished in 2015 and opened in 2020, still carries his name.