Muzaffer Tokaç

Muzaffer Tokaç — Biography

Muzaffer Tokaç was a Turkish international footballer who played right wing for Galatasaray in the 1940s and 1950s and went by the nicknames "Sarı Muzaffer" and "Cinci Muzaffer". The first is said to come from his fair hair, the second from his technique and reading of the game; he also captained Galatasaray at times.

He began in football at the club while still a student at Galatasaray High School and soon became a regular in the first eleven. With the team he won the Istanbul League in 1948-49 and the Istanbul Professional League in 1954-55. In 1956 he said goodbye to football in a ceremony before a league match against Beykoz.

He wore the national shirt 18 times in all: 13 for the senior side, 1 for Turkey B and 3 for the under-21s. On 17 June 1951 in Berlin, in one of the most important matches in Turkish football history, a 2-1 win over Germany, he scored the winning goal. He was in the squad that reached the quarter-finals at the 1948 Summer Olympics, and he is also listed among the competitors at the 1952 Games.

After football he settled in New York with his family, founded a trading company under the PAN-Turk umbrella with businessman Rauf Halat, and for a time worked as the New York correspondent of the newspaper Milliyet. He died in the United States in 2009.