Passionate Turkish football fan sets up museum in house

SAMSUN, Turkey

A genuine Turkish football fan has been keeping hundreds of Trabzonspor jerseys for almost 27 years to exhibit them in a private museum in his house.

Trabzonspor fan Sedat Yesilyurt, 40, told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday that he has collected almost 400 Trabzonspor jerseys since he was 13 and is now showing them in a museum that he built in his house.

Living in the Black Sea province of Samsun, Yesilyurt had formed a password protected museum to display the club's jerseys.

A loyal Trabzonspor fan, Yesilyurt started to collect Trabzonspor jerseys in 1992, while he was a teen.

He had a Trabzonspor jersey for the 1975-1976 football season, which has a special meaning for the fans as the six-time Turkish champions won their first ever domestic league title in that year, he said.

He added that it's very hard to have the club's retro jerseys of 70s, 80s and 90s, but Yesilyurt got the 1975-1976 jersey thanks to a kit collector, who lived in Usak, a western Turkish province.

"Every jersey has a different memory and story. You have to know many people and reach them to get these jerseys. And I did so much effort [to have them]," Yesilyurt said.

He said that he bought some of the jerseys abroad and now he wants to have all Trabzonspor jerseys since 1967 when the club was founded.

Yesilyurt added that he has around 400 Trabzonspor jerseys and 300 of them were worn by the players.

Trabzonspor is one of the most popular and respected Super Lig clubs in Turkey as the Black Sea team is one of the "Big Four" alongside Istanbul heavyweights Besiktas, Fenerbahce and Galatasaray.

* Writing by Emre Asikci