Following Beşiktaş’s 1-0 derby win over city rivals Galatasaray, our Technical Director Ertuğrul Sağlam congratulated the Black and White players on their valiant effort. 

This is the first time that any of Sağlam’s teams has ever placed at top of the league. On the other hand, Beşiktaş grabbed the leadership after 137 weeks.
Our Technical Director Ertuğrul Sağlam went on to make these comments regarding the game:
“This game meant a lot to us. We needed a win badly. There were too many reasons why we had to win and my players knew them very well. They executed perfectly on the pitch and carried us to the top after a long 137-week period. I want to thank each and every one of them on their brilliant effort. It is always nice to be a league leader any time during the regular season but finishing first at the end is certainly more important. If we want to be a champion and make our fans who come out to support us week after week happy, we have to be more productive on the pitch in our future games. This was a good start tonight, but tomorrow we have to stick together more than ever and show some self-sacrifice because it is not easy to be a leader in this tight race.        
Now, we don’t need any help from the other teams. As long as we keep winning our own games, we’ll remain at the top of the league until the end of that final 90 minutes. This point was made perfectly clear to my players. That’s the reason they performed so well out there tonight. But they also know that we have to work harder than before to maintain our league leading position against other competitors.  
I never lost my confidence during the game. Before the game I told my players that no matter what happened on the pitch, we still believed in them and still loved them. This may sound a little strange, but win or lose we would never stop supporting them. They always knew that we were right behind them when they needed us. This surely paid its dividends tonight.”