Anthony Nwakaeme set up the winner, Paul Onuachu scored his 22nd league goal, and Trabzonspor are now just one point behind Galatasaray in the Turkish Super Lig with seven games to play.
Anthony Nwakaeme is 37 years old and still deciding title races. The Super Eagles winger played 79 minutes on Saturday as Trabzonspor defeated Galatasaray 2-1 at Papara Park, a result that compresses the Turkish Super Lig table and reignites a title hunt that looked finished just a few weeks ago. Nwakaeme supplied the assist for Christian Nwaiwu’s winner and came off the pitch with Trabzonspor breathing down the neck of the league leaders.
Paul Onuachu had opened the scoring inside three minutes with a brilliant solo finish, and for a while it looked like Trabzonspor were going to cruise. Galatasaray levelled through Wilfred Singo three minutes into the second half. Then Nwakaeme intervened. His delivery to Nwaiwu produced the goal that settled the contest and sent Papara Park into scenes the city hasn’t seen since Trabzonspor won the Süper Lig title in 2021/22.
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A Nigerian Three-Hander at the Top of Turkish Football
This was not simply a Trabzonspor win. It was a Super Eagles takeover. Three Nigerians were central to a result that shook up the title race: Onuachu with the opening goal, Nwakaeme with the decisive assist, and Nwaiwu with the finish. Galatasaray, meanwhile, were missing Victor Osimhen, who is still recovering from a forearm fracture that required surgery. In his absence, Mauro Icardi started up front and failed to produce the impact Okan Buruk needed.
Onuachu’s goal was his 22nd of the league season, eight clear of Basaksehir’s Eldor Shomurodov in second place. The golden boot is practically his. Nwakaeme’s assist was a reminder that a player who has been doing this at the highest level since 2015 still knows exactly where and when to deliver a cross. And Nwaiwu, the younger of the three, finished calmly under pressure.
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Nwakaeme: “We’ll Try to Win Every Game”
After the final whistle, Nwakaeme was candid about what the result means and where the focus goes next. Speaking to Turkish outlet Fanatik, he said the preparation all week had been pointed toward exactly this kind of performance. “We’ve been working to win all week. We knew we’d get a lot closer to our opponent if we won,” he said. “We are very happy for our city and our team.”
On the title race itself, Nwakaeme refused to speculate beyond the next fixture. “Every game counts. We’ve taken the first and most important step. We’ve got six weeks. We’ll start with Alanyaspor. We’ll go to the game, and we’re gonna try to win every game.” It’s the kind of answer you get from someone who has been here before, who has won leagues and knows that press conference ambition counts for nothing without results on the pitch.
Onuachu echoed that message with his own post-match comments. “We really fought in front of our fans, and we put everything into winning,” he said. “We’ve got some tough games ahead of us. Every game is separate; we’ll go out to win them all.” He was careful to flag Göztepe as a potential danger to Galatasaray’s points tally, noting they are “a strong team that can score points” from their rivals.
What This Run-In Means for Nigerian Football’s Global Footprint
Step back from the table for a moment and look at what is actually happening in Turkey. Three Nigerian players, spanning three different generations and three very different career paths, are at the centre of a Super Lig title race. Onuachu, the towering striker who rebuilt his career in Turkey after leaving Belgium. Nwakaeme, the journeyman who conquered Israeli football and then conquered Turkey. Nwaiwu, the young forward still writing his story. None of them were handed anything.
Nwakaeme’s specific contribution to this moment carries its own weight. He was born in Lagos in March 1989. He started his professional career in Romanian second-division football. He worked his way to Israel, where he won three consecutive Israeli Premier League titles with Hapoel Be’er Sheva between 2016 and 2018, ending Maccabi Tel Aviv’s stranglehold on the league in the process. Then he moved to Trabzonspor and eventually helped them win the Süper Lig in 2021/22, their first title in 38 years.
Now, at 37, he is still making assists that change title races. There’s a generation of Nigerian kids in Lagos who don’t know who Anthony Nwakaeme is. There probably should be more of them who do. Bettors backing him and the Trabzonspor run-in can find the latest Bet9ja promotion code ahead of Trabzonspor’s match against Alanyaspor.
📌 Did You Know?
- Nwakaeme began his professional career in Romanian second-division football with Arieșul Turda in 2010, on loan from Universitatea Cluj, where he scored five goals in eight games before returning to the parent club.
- He won the Israeli Premier League Best Player award in 2016/17, the season he scored 19 goals and provided numerous assists to lead Hapoel Be’er Sheva to their second consecutive title.
- His three Israeli titles (2016, 2017, 2018) were the first back-to-back-to-back championship wins in Hapoel Be’er Sheva’s history and broke a period of dominance by Tel Aviv clubs that had persisted for years.
- When Nwakaeme left Be’er Sheva for Trabzonspor in August 2018, the reported transfer fee was just €1.1 million, one of the most undervalued transfers in Nigerian football history given the impact he would go on to have in Turkey.
- He is the younger brother of Dickson Nwakaeme, who was also a professional footballer, making the pair one of a small group of Nigerian sibling combinations to have played professionally in Europe simultaneously.
- Despite his trophy haul across Israel and Turkey, Nwakaeme has just one senior cap for Nigeria, earned on debut against Algeria in November 2017. He remained an unused substitute in earlier call-ups during the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign.
- Trabzonspor’s Papara Park stadium, where Saturday’s win over Galatasaray was played, holds over 41,000 fans and is named after a Turkish fintech company that became the stadium’s title sponsor, making it one of the more unusual naming rights deals in European football.
