Lefteris Antoniadis

Lefter Kucukandonyadis (Turkish: Lefter Küçükandonyadis) , born 1925 in Istanbul is a legendary football player and top scorer.

Born as the son of a Greek descent fisherman and grew up with ten other brothers and sisters, he started playing football in Taksim, Istanbul. Küçükandonyadis, transferred to Fenerbahçe in 1947. As the first Turkish footballer ever being international, he played during the years 1951-1953 for ACF Fiorentina in Italy and OGC Nice in France, but returned to his club afterwards. With Fenerbahçe, he won two Istanbul League and three Turkey League (1959, 1961 and 1964) championship titles. In the season 1953-1954, he became top scorer. Küçükandonyadis scored a total of 423 goals in 615 games for Fenerbahçe.

He played 50 times for the Turkey national football team, 9 of them as the captain. He scored 20 goals for Turkey national team, still a great performance after so many years, beaten only by Hakan Şükür by 46 goals. He is the first Turkish football player receiving the "Golden Honor medal" from the Turkish Football Federation.

After his retirement as active footballer in 1963, Küçükandonyadis was player and coach of the teams Egaleo FC in Greece and Johannesburg in South Africa. Returned to Turkey, he served as coach in the clubs Samsunspor, Orduspor, Mersin Idmanyurdu and Boluspor.

The forward playing hero was called “professor” (Turkish: “ordinaryus”) for his extraordinary performance, especially for his penalty goals. A street on the island Büyükada in Istanbul, the largest one of the Princes' Islands, where he lives is named after him.