Batuhan Karadeniz (born in 24 April 1991, İçerenköy, İstanbul), is a Turkish football player. He plays as a striker and currently plays for Beşiktaş. His family are from Antalya, a south seaside city of Turkey.
Batuhan is a hot prospect player as he showed great potential during his youth team performances with scoring 226 goals in 86 matches. Turned after professional career, he became the youngest scorer ever in Turkish football league at the age of 16. He's acknowledged as one of the most promising players in Europe with a very bright future by Turkish media and authorities. The young Turkish starlet has been strongly linked with English sides Manchester United and Manchester City. He has declared that he is currently happy with his role at Beşiktaş and would like to wait a while for his future ambition's to play abroad like his national team idol playmaker Emre.
He made his UEFA Champions League debut on 29 August 2007 in Beşiktaş' 2–0 win over FC Zurich, making a substitute appearance in the 92nd minute, coming on for Mert Nobre.
On 3 November 2007, Besiktaş played against Fenerbahçe and Batuhan came on as a substitute for Koray in the 83rd minute. He missed a very crucial chance for Kara Kartallar during the additional time (90+3) as he picked up a loose ball and faked the keeper Volkan, subsequently he tried to shoot despite having had two team-mates unmarked by his side and in the end he could not generate enough power on his shot and Edu cleared the ball away. Beşiktas lost the game with a final score of 2–1 to Fenerbahçe as Sarı Kanaryalar overtook Beşiktaş by one point.
During the 2007/2008 mid-season transfer window, Beşiktaş tried to make a deal with F.C. Köln the loan of Batuhan, however the transfer due to rule of minimum transfer age which is determined by each football federation by FIFA approval. According to DFB, a football player must be over 18 to be transferred with professional contract.
On a later interview at same season for a newspaper, he stated that he missed out Istanbul derby match against Galatasaray on 2007/08 season when he did not have even 5 TL to pay and watch at a café.
Remarkably, at the age of just 17, he was called up to the Turkish U-21 squad to play in the U-21 European Championships qualifiers, making him the youngest player in the under-21 side. Subsequently, national team coach Fatih Terim called Batuhan up to national team squad for the first time for 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification matches on October 2008. On 11 October 2008, Batuhan had his first cap for the national team against Bosnia & Herzegovina on Group 5 match day 3.
As a part of national U-17 team, he achieved the semi-finals in 2008 UEFA European Under-17 Football Championship and played against France. He was highly criticized due to showing the direction to the keeper in the penalty shoot-out where he will have shooted and behaved wayward. He also missed the penalty.
| Season | Team | League Apps | Goals | Cups Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07/08 | Beşiktaş | 11 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 08/09 | Beşiktaş | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |