8 April 2012 - Muslera Goes Coast To Coast

On 8 April 2012, goalkeeper Fernando Muslera scored the first goal of his career as Galatasaray routed Manisapor 0-4 on the last day of the season.

Galatasaray entered the match as league champions, starting the day six points clear of runners-up Fenerbahçe, who had already completed the season. Manisaspor, meanwhile, were guaranteed to finish seventeenth out of eighteen teams regardless of the result of their last game. So neither team had much to play for and the first 45 minutes reflected that. The only event of note in the first half was the 39th-minute ejection of Manisaspor midfielder Yiğit İncedemir after he received a second yellow.

Playing down a man, the hosts could not keep up with the title winners, who took the lead with a penalty kick from Selçuk İnan two minutes after the restart. He added another in the 77th minute to effectively seal the win, then had the opportunity for a hat-trick when the referee awarded another penalty to Galatasaray in the 83rd minute. But rather than take the kick himself, İnan opted to leave it to Muslera. The keeper ran the length of the pitch and drove the ball right down the middle to get the first--and, so far, only--goal of his career.

The game also marked Muslera's sixteenth clean sheet, as the game ended 0-4 after a final goal from Milan Baroš in the 87th minute.

11 March 1978 - The Coming Of Didier

On 11 March 1978, Didier Drogba was born in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. He went on to become one of the world's dominant strikers.

Growing up, he spent many years living in France and it was there he started his professional career, joining the youth program at Levallois in 1996, then moving to Le Mans in 1997. In 1998, he signed a professional contract with Le Mans and played there for three and a half years, scoring a total of only 15 goals in 75 appearances before moving to Guingamp for £80,000 in the winter transfer window.

The move sparked his career. In his first full season there, he scored 21 goals, attracting the interest of Marseille who signed him for £3.3M in the summer 2003. After only one remarkable season at Marseille, in which he scored 32 goals across all competitions and was named the Ligue 1 Player of the Year, he moved again, this time to Chelsea who paid £24M.

In eight seasons with Chelsea, he scored 157 goals in 341 appearances, making him the fourth-highest goalscorer in club history. He also collected a massive haul of silverware, including three league titles, four FA Cups, and one Champions League trophy.

Along the way, he also captained the Côte d'Ivoire national team and is their all-time leading scorer with 60 goals in 95 appearances.

After leaving Chelsea at the end of his contract in 2012, he spent a year with Shanghai Shenhua and currently plays for Galatasaray.

2 February 1936 - The Uncrowned King Is Born

On 2 February 1936, Metin Oktay, Galatasaray's all-time leading scorer, was born in Izmir, Turkey.

Nicknamed "Taçsız Kral" (the Uncrowned King), Oktay first joined the club in 1955 at the age of 19 after three seasons in the lower leagues, including one at his hometown club, İzmirspor. Although Galatasaray were already successful, winning their thirteenth national title in 1955, he gave them a boost with a club-best 19 goals in his first season to help them repeat as champions. It was the first of five league titles he would win with the club (the first three with the Istanbul League and the other two with the Süper Lig).

It was also the first of thirteen seasons in which he was their leading scorer, including each of his first seven seasons with the club. He remained with the club until 1969, broken only by a short spell with Palermo for the 1961-62 season. In all, he scored a total of 538 goals for Galatasaray in 497 appearances across all competitions (the next-highest tally belongs to Hakan Şükür, who scored a relatively meager 241 times in 545 appearances between 1992 and 2008).

Oktay also earned 36 caps for Turkey from 1955 to 1968 and scored 19 goals, but most of those were in friendlies as Turkey either withdrew from or did not qualify for any major tournament during his time with the team. He did score three times during qualification for the 1962 World Cup, but Turkey finished second to the Soviet Union in their group and did not advance.

After his retirement, he remained involved with the club, briefly managing them in the 1969-70 season and later serving on the board of directors. He died in 1991 at the age of 55 after a car accident.