Mo Salah, Trabzonspor and the Turkish Super Lig: Everything You Need to Know

Mohamed Salah is officially a Trabzonspor player. The 34-year-old signed a two-year deal worth a reported €34 million on Thursday after passing his medical in Istanbul the previous day, arriving at Trabzon airport in the club's shirt to a reception from thousands of supporters who had waited hours for him.

He left Liverpool this summer after nine years, 257 goals, and 113 assists in 442 appearances, having agreed to terminate the final year of his contract as Arne Slot’s rebuild at Anfield moved in a different direction. Before he opted for the Black Sea coast, Besiktas, several Saudi clubs, and MLS franchises were all reportedly in contact.

For many football fans outside Turkey, Trabzonspor is not a club they know in detail, and the Turkish Super Lig is not a competition they follow week to week.

Here, sportsbuzzfeed brings you everything you need to know about the league the Egyptian King has just joined.

How the Super Lig works

The Turkish Super Lig, known officially this season as the Trendyol Super Lig, is Turkey’s top division and has been running since 1959. It currently operates with 18 clubs, reduced from 20 two seasons ago after the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) decided to trim the field ahead of 2025-26.

Each club plays every other team twice, home and away, for a total of 34 matches per season. Three points for a win, one for a draw, nothing for a loss, the same format most fans know from leagues across Europe. The bottom three clubs go down directly, with no play-off round. The top three from the second division, the First League, come straight up.

Europe comes through the top of the table and the Turkish Cup. The Super Lig champion qualifies directly for the Champions League group phase, which is the same route Galatasaray have used across their recent dominant run. The runners-up enter Champions League qualifying. The Cup winners usually get a Europa League place, and further league positions feed into the Europa League and Conference League qualifying rounds depending on Turkey’s UEFA coefficient ranking, which currently sits ninth in Europe.

That ranking gives Turkish clubs reasonable access to the continent but keeps them a step behind the established top leagues.

Games run from Friday through Monday, with most of the marquee fixtures on Saturday and Sunday evenings. The season starts in August and finishes in May, closely mirroring the Premier League calendar.

One structural detail worth knowing is that clubs can register up to 14 foreign players in their squad, and from next season, at least four of those must be born after January 1, 2004, a rule designed to push clubs toward signing younger players rather than ageing stars from bigger leagues.

The Big Three & Matters Arising

Six clubs have won the Super Lig since it began in 1959, and three of them are from Istanbul. Galatasaray lead with 26 titles, having won four in a row from 2022-23 to 2025-26 under coach Okan Buruk, the most recent clinched in May with a 4-2 win over Antalyaspor.

Fenerbahce have 19 titles. Besiktas have 16. These three clubs, all Istanbul-based, have owned the league for most of its history. They have bigger budgets, bigger stadiums, bigger fanbases, and the political and commercial infrastructure that Istanbul's size provides.

Trabzonspor are the exception. The club from Turkey’s Black Sea coast won seven league titles, six of them between 1975 and 1984, which was an extraordinary run for a club from outside Istanbul. The fact that no club has matched them since speaks to how concentrated power in the Super Lig has become.

Their recent seasons have placed them in the Europa League conversation rather than the title race. They finished third last season, won the Turkish Cup, and enter 2026-27 in the Europa League group phase, which is exactly the European stage Salah will now play on.

Financial stability has been a persistent challenge across the league as a whole. UEFA’s 2023-24 report placed the combined equity of Super Lig clubs at negative €766 million, the worst figure in Europe. Clubs spend roughly 88% of their revenue on wages, well above the 70% UEFA recommends as a sustainable ceiling. Total debts across the league have at points exceeded €2 billion.

Trabzonspor are not immune to those pressures, but they have managed their finances more carefully than some of the Istanbul clubs and went into this summer’s window with a clear plan to use Salah's profile as the centrepiece of a push toward European relevance.

For Salah, the decision to come here rather than take the Saudi money or a quieter end to his career in MLS says something about what he still wants from football. Trabzonspor are in Europe. The league is competitive and plays at a level where he will still be tested. The two-year deal takes him to 36, which is further than most observers expected him to commit.

Edgbaston draws differently from Anfield, and the Senol Gunes Stadium in Trabzon, which holds around 40,000, will draw differently from Anfield too. Whether the Super Lig gives him what he still needs from the game is a question this season will answer.