ANKARA
Besiktas beat Atletico Madrid 2-0 in a charity match held Wednesday for people affected by the two earthquakes that struck Türkiye in early February.
Home team Black Eagles scored the opener in the first half as Portuguese midfielder Gedson Fernandes put the ball into Atletico’s net after a genius pass by Rachid Ghezzal.
Besiktas led the first half at Istanbul’s Vodafone Park.
The Black Eagles doubled the lead in the 88th minute as Cameroonian winger Georges-Kevin N’Koudou scored after taking advantage of Atletico Madrid defender Stefan Savic’s mistake.
Besiktas won the solidarity match 2-0.
The Turkish club previously said that the gate receipts of this match would be spent to help school construction in the quake-hit area in Türkiye.
There were nearly 25,000 spectators at Vodafone Park.
Before the kickoff, Atletico Madrid players held a banner to show their support for the aid campaign which said “Together for Türkiye.” Meanwhile, Besiktas thanked them in Spanish in the same way by courtesy.
The twin earthquakes on Feb. 6 in southern Türkiye killed more than 50,000 people in the country and prompted international solidarity.
The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck 11 Turkish provinces — Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Elazig, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye and Sanliurfa.
Around 14 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the quakes as well as many others in northern Syria.
