Something strange happened in tonight’s Group A match between Türkiye and Italy. In the first half, one team was played off the park, and the other ascended — and the gap between two teams looked more akin to a youth team going up against a World Cup powerhouse.
Italy played their best half, maybe in years, and Türkiye looked horrendous.
For Arda Güler’s part, there’s not much he could’ve done to change the outcome of those first 45 minutes. Türkiye head coach Vincenzo Montella set up the team far
too passive and defensively loose. The 3-4-3, on paper, really played out into a 4-4-2 mid-block with zero pressing and laughable tracking.
It was the same play, over and over again, that broke them: Italy would play one pass through Türkiye’s first line of defense, and from there, they had an open man with every ensuing pass. Once they carved through the middle without resistance, they would play the ball to the open wide man — typically Michael Kayode making the overload — and get a dangerous chance in the box.
Montella also got very poor production from both of his wing-backs. Zeki Çelik made two errors on Italy’s first two goals; and Ozan Kabak was constantly scrambling defending the switch with little-to-no-help from Eren Elmalı on the left.
Türkiye went down 0-3 at half-time after being terrible on both ends. Their offense was completely non-existent, as their entire build-up was resorted to giving the ball away prolifically in their own third in the face of a very aggressive Italy press.
The second half was wildly different than the first half. Türkiye made three changes and brought their line higher up the field while pressing with more intent. Italy, naturally, dropped deeper and relied on transition football with the bulk of their damage already done.
But, as they say, too little, too late, etc.
While Türkiye scored within 90 seconds of the second half, three minutes later, Altay Bayındır committed a terrible giveaway which Pio Esposito eventually scored from.
Although Türkiye did enough, creatively, to score multiple goals in the second half to get themselves back into the game, their finishing wasn’t good enough. Güler, who had a terrific second half, had one of his assists disallowed for offside, and some of his brilliant plays resulted in nothing.
In his 90 minutes on the field, Güler had the most touches of anyone on the field (100), the most shots of anyone on the field (four), the most dribbles of anyone on the field (four), and drew the most fouls of anyone on the field (five).
Türkiye play against Belgium next, with zero points to show for after two games.
