“It was 5.30am and the sun was already rising by the time the last of Manchester City’s jubilant supporters made it back from the Ataturk Olympic Stadium to the beating heart of Istanbul. This vibrant, enthralling, gloriously chaotic city at the crossroads of the world, where Asia meets Europe in the waters of the Bosphorus, was waking to a new dawn. … Empires rise and empires fall. Istanbul — Byzantium in the days of the Greek empire, Constantinople to the Romans — is the perfect illustration of that. …”
The Athletic