El Chadaille Bitshiabu became Galatasaray’s 12th French player
French defender El Chadaille Bitshiabu became the 12th footballer from France in the history of Turkish club Galatasaray after joining the Istanbul side. The 21-year-old player was signed during the summer transfer window, Anadolu Agency reports.
The club’s 220th foreign player
Bitshiabu also became the 220th foreign footballer signed by Galatasaray. Since the start of Turkey’s top football division in 1959, the club had signed 219 foreign players from 55 countries on six continents before the defender’s arrival.
The defender became one of the team’s newcomers in this transfer window after French midfielder Lesley Ugochukwu, Russian Aleksei Batrakov and Portuguese forward Rafael Leao.
Galatasaray’s French players and foreign signings
Before Bitshiabu, the French players who represented Galatasaray were Didier Six, Sebastien Perez, Franck Ribery, Lionel Carole, Bafetimbi Gomis, Cedric Carrasso, Steven Nzonzi, Sacha Boey, Leo Dubois, Tanguy Ndombele and Lesley Ugochukwu.
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Bitshiabu made 21 appearances for France’s youth national teams: nine for the U-17 side, six for U-18, five for U-19 and one for U-20.
Most players from Brazil
Among foreign players, Galatasaray has most often signed footballers from Brazil — 25 players. Yugoslavia ranks second by number of transfers with 16 footballers, while Romania is third with 15.
The club also had eight footballers of Turkish origin who held citizenship of other countries. They include Swiss nationals Kubilay Turkyilmaz, Hakan Yakin and Eren Derdiyok; German nationals Pierre Esser, Kerem Demirbay and Ilkay Gundogan; Swede Jimmy Durmaz; and Austria-born Yusuf Demir.
