Мохамед Салах Трабзонспорын бүрэлдэхүүнд талбайд гарсан нь Трабзон хотыг доргиолоо

The camel stops urinating just long enough for the kids to pose for a picture with it.

It’s not normal to see a camel outside a football match but then again, this isn’t a normal football match. It’s Mohamed Salah’s first start and first home game for Trabzonspor, and ahead of a Europa League play-off round qualifying match against Ferencvaros, some have decided to welcome him with a little slice of home. Where has he come from? “Egypt!” the camel’s handler declares with a grin, unconvincingly.

Elsewhere, a man called Sinan has dressed in full Arabic robes, paired with sunglasses that have “SA” painted on one lens and “LAH” on the other. Someone has (perhaps temporarily) named a mosque after Salah, in a small town just outside Trabzon.

Kerem and Arda, Dutchmen from Turkish backgrounds, have made the trip to Turkey especially for the game. “I still can’t believe it,” says Kerem. Selim, a middle-aged man, is getting his face painted in the team’s colours like he’s a little boy again.

Nobody expected Salah to be here. Had he left Liverpool a year ago on the back of another Premier League title and his fourth Golden Boot, he would’ve had his pick of pretty much any team he wanted. But after a season when he struggled and was a bit-part player by the end, his options were more limited.

He wasn’t keen on Saudi Arabia. America didn’t hold much appeal. Europe’s top clubs weren’t enthusiastic, the requested salary not quite matching up with his most recent output. Besiktas came close but pulled out when it became too rich for them.

Trabzonspor were the last men standing. It was during the World Cup, while watching Egypt play, that club president Ertugrul Dogan texted manager Fatih Tekke: “Coach, do you want Salah?” At that point, it was a bit like saying “Coach, do you want the Koh-i-Noor diamond, lobster for dinner every night and a time machine?” Well, yes… but it isn’t happening, is it.

Trabzonspor supporter Sinan wears his custom Mohammed Salah sunglasses with pride (Nick Miller/The Athletic)

As it turns out, it did. Carefully handled negotiations resulted in Salah signing for a salary of around €17million — net, not gross — and a city losing its mind. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Salah after his presentation, when Trabzonspor fans filled their Papara Park stadium to welcome him in thunderous fashion.

The club, quite understandably, made quite a fuss. Salah featured in a rather sweet video in which he is welcomed into the home of a grandma named Khadija Akbash, was fed local delicacies and welcomed into the family. They also flew out Isaac Kearney, a young Liverpool fan who has a rare condition called Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome and who went viral after being visited by Salah and others last year, and walked out alongside his idol as a mascot for Thursday’s game.

Turkish clubs have a reputation for signing ageing stars but it’s not really Trabzonspor’s MO: in recent years, they have tried to be self-sustainable by buying low and selling high. Just this summer, they have sold the striker Felipe Augusto and the midfielder Christ Inao Oulai, doubling their money on both inside two years. That’s fine and very sensible, but it doesn’t excite the fans. Signing Salah might not be sensible but it certainly does excite the fans.

In town, on the morning of the game, I ask a Trabzonspor fan called Buruk if Salah is the biggest signing the club have ever made. He shakes his head. I’m surprised, scrolling through names like Marek Hamsik, Daniel Sturridge and Florent Malouda, and all the way back to Jean-Marie Pfaff, trying to think who could be bigger. But it turns out I’m thinking about it the wrong way.

“He’s the biggest player any Turkish club has ever signed,” Buruk says.

Trabzon is not a large place, relatively speaking; a city with a population of around 300,000 on the Black Sea coast. It veered from driving rain to punishing sunshine on this August matchday, but in the autumn and winter, a thick mist rolls in from the sea and envelops the place. When combined with the huge, steep hill that looms over the city centre, there can be a claustrophobic vibe.

It’s a blue-collar place, a working-class port town that often gets forgotten by the rest of the country. It’s not the colossal metropolis of Istanbul, nor the administrative capital of Ankara, nor a tourist destination like Bodrum or Dalaman. There is a sense that it is patronised and talked down to a lot of the time.

But in a country that loves football with an often terrifying intensity, arguably nowhere loves the game as much as they do here. And more specifically, they love Trabzonspor. They’re one of only two teams from outside Istanbul to have won the Super Lig, which they did six times in their glory years between 1976 and 1984, and again in 2022, the last team not called Galatasaray to be champions. They claim 2011 too, when they believe the title was robbed from them, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole here.

The blue and maroon colours of the team are everywhere: on the minibuses that form part of the city’s public transport network, on fences, flags, bunting in the town square, an umbrella outside a potato stall, the mounts for necklaces and bracelets in a jeweller’s window.

Mohamed Salah scarves on display outside Trabzonspor’s stadium (Nick Miller/The Athletic)

But mostly, they’re on the backs of people. Maybe it’s not surprising in a one-club city but I’ve never seen a higher proportion of people wandering around, not at a stadium, wearing a single team’s colours. Usually, you’ll see plenty of shirts from elsewhere when walking around a place but after spending the day in Trabzon, I saw one kid wearing a Barcelona shirt, one Real Madrid and a couple of legacy Salah fans in Liverpool tops at the game. Not even a Turkish national team shirt and certainly not any from the big three from Istanbul. Every other shirt was Trabzonspor.

“It’s our identity,” explains Berkan, a fan since he was a boy. “Those other teams… they don’t exist here.”

Those shirts are generally split into three categories. There are the ones with no number on the back, keeping things clean and simple. Then there are the ones with 61, reflecting a significant number for the people of Trabzon: it’s the local postal code and the local car number-plate identifier, among other things, but beyond that, has become a symbol of the city — so much so that people pay extra to have 61 in their phone numbers and a few years ago, the banks had to ask locals to mix up their PIN numbers a bit because the “6” and “1” keys on ATMs were getting worn down.

And the third group, by rough estimates the majority by a good distance, have “10” and “M Salah” on the back. He’s been a Trabzonspor player for a fortnight and he’s already the must-have fashion item.

Someone of Salah’s status — and let’s not forget this is perhaps the best and most famous Muslim player in the world, in a Muslim-majority country — coming to a place like Trabzon means something extra.

“When a global superstar like Salah comes to Trabzon, it’s not just about watching a great footballer,” says local journalist Hasan Tuncel. “It means showing the world the football culture and passion that this city and this club have carried for generations.

“I see this transfer as more than just a sporting move. For Trabzonspor and the city of Trabzon, I believe it could be a real turning point.“

After the camel, the noise and the hysteria, it’s easy to forget that Salah actually has to play football.

Against Ferencvaros, he looks like a player who hasn’t had a pre-season, which isn’t especially surprising as that’s exactly what he is. He shows a few nice touches, drags a shot just wide, and hits one outside-of-the-foot cross from the left which zips into the box and inspires a noise of anticipation from the crowd like they’re cresting the peak of a rollercoaster. In stoppage time, Trabzonspor get a free kick just outside the box and to the right: perfect for Salah but his shot is blocked.

There’s a lot of arm-flapping, a fair amount of frustration as passes go astray: here is a man who, with the greatest of respect to the Trabzonspor team, is used to playing alongside the best in the world. He’s adjusting, and so are they.

There’s a sort of gravity that develops around superstars in situations like this. It’s like when there’s someone famous in a room: everyone has half an eye on what they’re doing or saying, regardless of whether they’re doing or saying anything of more worth than anyone else. People don’t quite now how to act around them and there’s something of this in how Salah’s colleagues play.

In the first half, Salah’s team-mates look to him regardless of whether other options are better, encouraged to do so by the crowd: this happened at least four times, most notably a counter-attack opportunity when left winger Noah Saviolo was in at least 20 yards of space on one flank but Andre Onana ludicrously punted it to the double-marked Salah on the other. Salah actually created a chance from that one but that said more about his abilities than Onana’s decision-making.

Mohamed Salah has become the most high-profile player in the Turkish Super Lig (Burak Basturk/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

And then in the second half, it seems to flip. Salah makes runs that aren’t found, he’s bypassed by crosses after moving from the right in a 4-2-3-1 to up front in a 4-4-2, and he doesn’t seem quite certain about his position. It all feels a bit alien, disjointed. They will have to get used to him, and he to them.

He’ll also have to get used to essentially having a giant arrow above his head like he’s in a computer game. Opposition players will target him, as Ferencvaros did here: the vast Argentine-born, Hungarian-nationalised centre-back Mariano Gomez marked Salah and didn’t miss any opportunities to rough up his man.

The game ends in defeat for Trabzonspor, a first-half header by Kristoffer Zachariassen the only goal. But the result was almost incidental: the stadium was full of people who had come to see Salah and while ideally he would have given them a goal to take home with them, merely confirming this isn’t a dream and he genuinely is a Trabzonspor player, is enough.

Reality will set in from this point. Over the coming weeks and months, Trabzonspor will assess whether they have made a mistake committing so much money to a 34-year-old fresh from nearly a decade of being battered in the Premier League. Salah will assess whether he made a mistake signing for the fourth-biggest team in Europe’s ninth-best league.

It could go brilliantly. Trabzonspor came third in the Super Lig last season: once Salah gets going, he could be the difference. There were still a few touches here that made you remember the old Salah.

But that’s for another day. For games when there aren’t camels outside.