“But we have not begun to fight!!!!”- Turkey 0-2 Portugal

Well I dont think anyone was too surprised by the scoreline. As I’ve said before, this isn’t our match. We need to defeat the Swiss and Czechs, a more reasonable and realistic objective. As a result we now need the Portuguese to win their remaining matches, we need them to “work for us”.

Turkey: 0 – Portugal: 2

Stadium: Stade de Geneve
Referees: Herbert Fandel, Carsten Kadach, Volker Wezel

Turkey: Volkan, Hamit (min. 76 Semih), Gökhan Zan (min. 55 Emre Aşık), Servet, Hakan Balta, Kazım Kazım, Emre, Aurelio, Tuncay, Mevlüt (min. 46 Sabri), Nihat
Manager: Fatih Terim
Bench: Rüştü, Sabri, Emre Aşık, Mehmet Topal, Tümer, Semih

Portugal: Ricardo, Bosingwa, Pepe, Carvalho, Ferreira, Petit, Moutinho, Ronaldo, Deco, Simao (min. 83 Meireles), Nuno Gomes (min. 69 Nani).
Manager: Felipe Scolari
Bench: Patricio, Bruno Alves, Miguel, Meireles, Quaresma, Nani, Postiga

Goals: Pepe (min. 61), Meireles (min. 90)
Yellow Cards: Kazım Kazım, Gökhan Zan, Sabri (Turkey)

They throroughly deserved the match. They hit the post three times and there wasn’t a single real Turkish chance for a goal. However in the general gameplay, it wasn’t all that bad. I was actually pleased with the first half play. The defense kept their calm, the midfield pressed forward as they could, and Nihat tried his best. However the second half was completely different. Tuncay stopped doing anything productive, Emre got lost in the midfield, and Gokhan Zan once again made mistakes in the defense.

Eventually the Portuguese were able to break down the door and with a great one-two by the Pepe-Nuno Gomes combination, and made it 1-0. To be honest, it was a poor shot. I feel that Volkan would have easily saved that shot if Emre hadn’t made that maneuver to block the shot. Either way nothing can be done. I was however disappointed by the last minute goal. There’s something called damage control. Even if ur 1-0 done, you just cant go and give up another goal in the last minute of the game. That -2 goal average will come back to haunt us, I’ll tell you right now.

Of course this is still the start of the tournament. If we win our last two match we go through, maybe if we’re lucky 4 points might be enough to get us through also. All of our efforts must be on the Switzerland match next Wednsday. As I stated before, we need the Portuguese to help us out and beat the Czechs. Hopefully they’ll beat them by a couple of goals.

There were a couple of bright spots in the match. Without a doubt Servet was great. He was able to hold back the Portuguese with his sheer strength and It was great entertainment to watch Nani and Simao tumble to the floor after trying to get the ball from him. The man is literally a tank on the field. Kazim-Kazim also did his best despite having to play against Ronaldo. I can’t say much against Mevlut either. He was pretty good during the first half and hopefully he’ll do better as the tournament proceeds.