The photograph itself was taken at the Fenerbahçe Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium in Istanbul during the UEFA Europa League group stage, where I was accredited as a pitch-side photographer. Capturing a goal celebration requires both anticipation and positioning — reading the game a few seconds ahead to be in the right spot when the moment unfolds. This particular frame caught the collective emotion of the Nottingham Forest players, which is precisely why it worked so well to anchor a tactical analysis piece.
Nottingham Forest’s run in the 2025–26 UEFA Europa League was one of the competition’s standout storylines, and their two-legged tie against Fenerbahçe drew significant attention across European sports media. Being the photographer whose image The Athletic chose to represent that encounter — for an audience of millions of subscribers worldwide — is a milestone in my ongoing work covering European club football from Istanbul.
As a UEFA-accredited sports photographer based in Turkey, I regularly cover Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, and Beşiktaş in both domestic and European competitions. My work is distributed through international wire services and has appeared in outlets including ESPN, CNN, The Mirror, Ouest-France, and now repeatedly in The Athletic / New York Times.
Link to article: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7058650/2026/02/20/nottingham-forest-fenerbahce-analysis/
