Oktay Derelioğlu

Oktay Derelioğlu — Biography

Oktay Derelioğlu (born 17 December 1975 in Karagümrük, Istanbul) is a Turkish former international striker and a football manager. Wikidata lists his height as 1.82 m.

He came through at Fatih Karagümrük and went on to play for Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe, Trabzonspor, İstanbulspor, Samsunspor, Sakaryaspor, Gaziantepspor and Diyarbakırspor, as well as Las Palmas in Spain, Nürnberg in Germany and Khazar Lankaran in Azerbaijan. The English Wikipedia credits him with 14 goals in European competition for Beşiktaş, a club record.

He appeared for Turkey at UEFA Euro 2000, but is remembered above all for the goal he scored against Belgium at the Ali Sami Yen stadium on 30 April 1997 in 1998 World Cup qualifying: picking the ball up in midfield, he beat a string of defenders — five according to the Russian Wikipedia, six according to the English one, one of them twice — before rounding the goalkeeper Filip De Wilde, in a run compared to Maradona's "Goal of the Century". In December 2023 NTV, Habertürk and Sabah reported that he and his wife had been attacked in a road-rage incident.