The doorman at the Fairmont Hotel in the Mecidiyekoy district of Istanbul smiled when I wandered into the lobby and asked him if he could give me directions to the site of the old Ali Sami Yen Stadium.
He looked around theatrically, then pointed to the floor. ‘You are standing on it,’ he said.
Now, where there was once so much sound and fury, conference delegates mill around and nibble on biscuits and hotel guests come and go, unaware that this was once one of the great cathedrals of European football.
The last time I watched a Galatasaray home game on this spot in 1999, there was an armoured car parked on the forecourt of the famous old arena and soldiers thronging its perimeter for the visit of Gianluca Vialli’s Chelsea in a Champions League group stage game that was so fraught with tension it felt more like the prelude to a firefight than a football match.