The World Cup is about moments. Flashes of brilliance that generations to come will remember. Goals, pieces of skill, passes, whatever: we’ll all watch as many games as is logistically plausible, but you won’t remember many beyond the really big ones.
You will remember those moments, though, and that’s exactly why most neutrals should hope that Turkey make it through to the tournament in the summer. Particularly as, if they do, they will be in the same group as the U.S. and will have the eyes of the world on them.
Because they have players capable of moments, as Arda Guler proved in the semi-final of their play-off against Romania.
It was the 53rd minute of what was hitherto a slightly frustrating game.
Guler, the most talented of an exciting generation of young Turkish attackers, along with Kenan Yildiz, Baris Alper Yilmaz, and the precocious Can Uzun (not fit enough for this game), had the ball deep on the right.
His options looked limited.
A wonky rectangle of four opponents in front of him appeared to be blocking most of the decent angles for a pass. Right-back Mert Muldur was behind him for a short, slightly boring pass. Ismail Yuksek was 10 yards to the side: again, a little dull.
Yildiz was in a bit of space on the far side, so shifting the play entirely could have been an option.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Ferdi Kadioglu dashing through a gap in the defence.
The Brighton full-back was being pursued by a clutch of frantic Romanians, but it was already too late, like spotting a dog on his way out of the back door, that night’s steak dinner between its teeth.
The run was terrific, but finding it was another matter.
Guler had a path about 15 yards wide into which he could have played a low ball, but it was the sort of gap that would have closed rapidly and would thus require a real fizzer of a pass to penetrate it. So he lined up the angles and decided to go over the defence instead.
Even then, this was ‘land it on a sixpence’ stuff: Kadioglu was heading for the penalty spot with defenders in hot pursuit, meaning that if the pass was even a little bit too short, then he might not have controlled it at all, but if it was even a little bit too strong, then the goalkeeper would have claimed it easily.
It’s moments like this that you realise just how differently footballers’ brains are wired to the rest of us.
Guler had maybe half a second between him spotting Kadioglu’s run and striking the ball, meaning he had to precisely weigh up the physics of getting the ball at exactly the right speed, to exactly the right spot, in the blink of an eye.
He did it perfectly. Kadioglu still had some work to do, which he pulled off nicely by controlling the ball on the half-volley and slotting it under Romania goalkeeper Ionut Radu. But had the ball been with anyone else, his run would have simply been wasted energy.
Most other players probably wouldn’t have even seen the run. Fewer would have been able to think quickly enough to work out how to find it. Fewer still would have been able to pull it off.
It’s not a fluke, either. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Guler managed another dazzling piece of improvisational brilliance, scoring from deep in his own half for Real Madrid against Elche.
(Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images)
And he did it at the last international tournament he played in, scoring an astonishing goal from 30 yards against Georgia at Euro 2024. Turkey only got as far as the quarter-finals of that tournament, but most who watched it will remember what they did more than the Netherlands, who beat them, or England, who beat the Netherlands. They’re a flawed but creative and enormously talented team who might be frustrating, but they’re rarely dull.
The World Cup is about moments. Turkey, generally, and Guler specifically, are more likely than most to provide ones we’ll all remember.
