2014/15 · Home

A working Tryon with a crest that tells the whole town: Bodrum Castle above the Aegean waves and the founding 1931, with the B.B. of Bodrum Belediyesi recalling that it was the town hall holding the project together. No sponsor and a clean back: a squad shirt from the era when the whole club still fitted in one van.

It served in 2014/15, and that dating says everything: it was the season Bodrum Belediyesi Bodrumspor won the regional amateurs and rose to the 3rd League, the second step of a ladder that in less than a decade would carry it from neighbourhood pitches to the Süper Lig, by then as Bodrum FK. Whoever wore it played in anonymity; nine years later, the club was hosting Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe beside the Aegean.

Here at Hoopster this is the shirt from before the miracle: the castle was already there, so were the waves, the rest of the country just hadn't noticed yet. The hoops knew how to wait.