Galatasaray 2-2 Çorum FK: Osimhen brace rescues champions after debutants' late scare

Galatasaray 2-2 Çorum FK: Osimhen brace rescues champions after debutants' late scare

Newly promoted Çorum FK score their first-ever Süper Lig goal, take the lead with ten men, and are denied only by a stoppage-bound Victor Osimhen leveller on an unforgettable top-flight bow

By Dr Talal Osman at Rams Park

Friday 14 August 2026

Galatasaray had intended this to be a coronation. Instead, on the opening night of their title defence, the four-time champions were made to survive by a team that did not exist in the Süper Lig a week earlier. Çorum FK, newly promoted and playing their first match in Turkish football's top flight, took the game to Galatasaray with a fearlessness that bordered on impertinence, went ahead with ten men, and were beaten only in the cruellest circumstances  a Victor Osimhen header deep into a match that had threatened to end in humiliation for the hosts.

There was little in the opening exchanges to suggest the drama to come. Galatasaray, marshalled by Lucas Torreira in midfield, dominated the ball and territory for long spells, with Osimhen twice denied by an alert Marcos Felipe in the Çorum goal before finally breaking the deadlock in the 53rd minute, turning in Torreira's pass to send Rams Park into what felt at the time like routine celebration.

It did not stay routine for long. Six minutes later Alexandros Kyziridis, deep inside his own half when the move began, arrived at the edge of the Galatasaray box and drove a shot into the top corner that goalkeeper Uğurcan Çakır could only watch fly past him — a strike as audacious as it was historic, Çorum's first goal in the Süper Lig arriving in the unlikeliest of settings and levelling the scores at 1-1. Two minutes later the visitors were ahead: Jesús Ramírez pounced on a mistake by Davinson Sánchez to slot beyond Çakır and send a section of the 50,000-plus inside Rams Park into stunned silence.

Galatasaray's response was to lose their discipline before they found their rhythm. Kyziridis, so instrumental in Çorum's revival, was sent off in the 70th minute for a challenge on Yunus Akgün, reducing the visitors to ten men and, on paper, tilting the contest back towards the hosts. What followed instead was twenty minutes of increasingly frantic Galatasaray pressure against a Çorum defence, marshalled superbly by Marcos Felipe, that refused to buckle  and a crowd inside Rams Park growing audibly restless, with chants calling for the club's management to resign breaking out as the scoreline stayed stubbornly at 2-1.

Osimhen finally found the equaliser Galatasaray's pressure had long threatened in the 90th minute, rising to head home and spare his side's blushes on an afternoon when defeat to newly promoted opposition would have cast an immediate shadow over Okan Buruk's title defence. Even then there was a final twist to come, Mohamed Diomande's header in stoppage time almost handing Çorum an outcome that would have ranked among the great Süper Lig upsets, only for Çakır to intervene.

"Two goals turned the match in two minutes  a long-range shot, and we needed to track back," Buruk said afterwards, tracing the game's pivot point with the precision of a man who had already replayed it several times in his head. He did not spare his players, or the atmosphere they had allowed to sour. "The atmosphere in the stadium turned negative very rapidly. It affected the players too," he admitted, before conceding the result plainly: "This was a night we should have won."

There was little appetite from the Galatasaray manager to dwell on excuses. Instead, Buruk turned immediately to the transfer window, with the tone of a man who knows reinforcements are now urgent rather than optional. "This week will be important  getting a transfer done will be essential," he said, before specifying the gaps he wants filled: "We need three attacking players  a striker, a winger, and cover up front." Asked about the wider mood around the club after a stumbling start, he did not dress it up. "None of us are enjoying our current situation," he said, before restating, with more conviction than the performance had earned, his side's ambitions for the season ahead: "We're at the start of the league and we have the strength to win it again. We're the main favourites."

For Çorum FK and their supporters, there will be pride rather than despondency in a point taken off the champions on debut, achieved with ten men for the final twenty minutes and built on a goal that will be replayed on Turkish football highlight reels for years. Galatasaray, by contrast, leave their own season opener with the uncomfortable sensation of a club whose squad, on this evidence, is not yet the finished article Buruk insists it will become.

Galatasaray 2 (Osimhen 53, 90) Çorum FK 2 (Kyziridis 59, Ramírez 61) Sent off: Kyziridis (Çorum FK, 70) Referee: Batuhan Kolak — VAR: Fedai San Rams Park, Istanbul