Galatasaray earned their first points of this season's UEFA Champions League on Wednesday evening, defeating French side Lille 4-2 at the Stade Pierre Mauroy. The win came in the third round of league-phase matches and followed defeats to Sporting and Barcelona in the opening two fixtures, according to Hürriyet.
Yunus Akgün opened the scoring in the second minute, Aleksei Batrakov added a second in the 44th, Nabil Bentaleb turned the ball into his own net in the 52nd, and Victor Osimhen struck in the 61st. Soriba Diaoune scored both of Lille's goals, in the eighth and 39th minutes.
Why it matters
The result carries weight beyond the three points. Hürriyet reports that Galatasaray became the first Turkish club to beat Lille, a side that had previously met Fenerbahçe and Trabzonspor six times in European competition, winning two and drawing four.
It also ended a long drought on French soil. Galatasaray's previous away victory against a French opponent in a European cup match came on 26 September 2001, a 1-0 win at Nantes. Across their six away matches in France since then, the club had drawn two and lost four. The Lille result was their first Champions League away win in five attempts, the last having been a 3-0 victory at Ajax in the fourth round of last season's league phase.
Hürriyet columnists Uğur Meleke and Mehmet Ayan assessed the performance in their columns the following morning. According to Hürriyet, the win pushed back criticism of the team's play before the Fenerbahçe derby, and the paper credited Galatasaray's courage in the second half with producing an important victory in France.
Batrakov and Osimhen make their mark
Batrakov, the 21-year-old Russian midfielder, has now scored in each of his last two Champions League appearances, having also found the net against Barcelona. Hürriyet notes that he had never played a European cup match before joining Galatasaray, and that his goal against Lille came alongside his role in setting up Osimhen's strike.
Osimhen's goal was his first in the competition this season. Hürriyet's match coverage also named Barış as the standout performer on the night, while Meleke's column singled out Uğurcan, Osimhen, Sallai, Barış, Yunus and Torreira for strong displays.
Meleke's column offered context on the opponent. Lille are the last club other than Paris Saint-Germain to take the French title, and they remain level on points with PSG in the league, trailing on goal difference. They lost two key players to the Premier League in the summer — the defensive midfielder Bouaddi and the striker Fernandez-Pardo — but Hürriyet's columnist described them as still dynamic, with the 19-year-old left winger Diaoune and right winger Bakwa causing problems for a Galatasaray defence that was often slow to recover.
The same column noted a quirk of the week: both Turkish clubs in the competition scored their earliest goals in Champions League history within 48 hours of each other. Fenerbahçe reached 2-0 by the 10th minute on Tuesday, and Yunus put Galatasaray ahead after 65 seconds on Wednesday.
A financial boost
Fanatik reported that the Lille victory also brought a significant financial return from the Champions League, describing another major income stream for the club. The outlet did not provide figures in the summary available.
Lille coach Davide Ancelotti, meanwhile, said his side failed to manage certain moments of the game well, according to A Spor.
Galatasaray's next test comes in the Fenerbahçe derby, the fixture Hürriyet's writers identified as the immediate backdrop to the win. Whether the performance in France changes the tone around the team will be clearer after that match.
