Football (Soccer) is Turkey’s national sport and is played everywhere. Some of the well known teams are: Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, Beşiktaş and Trabzonspor. At this stage Turkish football is at a very important point. Turkish national teams are struggling with the strongest teams in the world and are getting more and more successful results. The U-16 and U-18 National Teams had achieved to be the champions and to get degrees in the European Youth Championships and the Mediterranean Championships.
The A-National Team was qualified for the 17th FIFA World Cup in 2002 in Korea/Japan reaching semifinals and they became the third best team of the world. In this Cup, the goal scored by Hakan Sukur at the 11th second of the match played between the Turkish and the Korean national teams was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as "the earliest goal scored in a world cup match". Lately, during the Euro 2008 Cup, Turkey played in the semifinals again and became one of the "best 4 teams of Europe".
The Galatasaray football team, defeating Arsenal at the UEFA Cup Finals in 1999-2000 season, won the UEFA title as well as the Super Cup when it overcame the "European Champion League" champion Real Madrid.
