Turkey 2-0 Finland Next stop, Geneve, Switzerland

So far Turkey has defeated Slovakia 1-0 and has lost to Uruguay 3-2. The match against Finland was one in which Fatih Terim was to determine who was and who wasn’t going to play against Portugal. So how did the match go?

TÜRKİYE:2 FİNLANDİYA: 0

Stadium: MSV Arena
Referees: Thorsten Kinhöfer, Detlef Scheppe, Christian Fischer
Turkey: Volkan, Hamit (min.78 Ayhan), Hakan Balta, Gökhan Zan, Servet, Sabri, Emre Belözoğlu (min.90 Gökdeniz), Mehmet Aurelio (min.87 M.Topal), Tuncay (min.67 Arda), Nihat (min.82 Semih), Mevlüt (min.75 Kazım)
Finland: Enckelman (min.46 Frederiksson), Nyman, Kallio, Pasoja (min.54 Lempi), Kuivasto, Vaerynen, Roman Eremenko (min.61 Litmanen), Heikkinen, (min.61 Johansson) Forssell (min.78), Alexei Eremenko, Kolkka.
Goals: Tuncay(min.16) Semih (min.88)
Yellow Cards: Tuncay

All in all nothing all that bad can be said about the Turks. They did what was necessary and finished he match 2-0 winners. However I have some “constructive criticism”. For one, this is a friendly match in which the team is supposed to prepare itself physically and mentally for the Portugal match. However we see the defense passing the ball to each other while the Finnish players just watch. In the real match against Portugal, the Portuguese forwards will be pressing our defense to force them to make a mistake. And as we saw in the Uruguay match, our defense is very prone to making mistakes.

I still dont understand why Semih and Kazim-Kazim are being called up to play at this level. But of course if Faith Terim calls up only two players from Brazilbahce, hes considered the scum of the world, even though both players have not shown anything worth noting.

On the postive side, it seems that the squad is ready for the Portugal match. Emre and Aurelio make a good pairing in the midfield while Nihat has been doing well in the penalty box. Hamit’s and Servet’s injuries seem to be at an end, somethign very important for us.

Now we can only sit and wait for the Portugal match. Fatih Terim and his assistants have been supposedly working day and night pouring over videos of Portuguese, Czech, and Swiss matches. It seems that the technical staff really want to do something in this tournament. Faith Terim has already said that his main goal is to show the world that Turkish football is still alive and well, even if this means to win the tournament itself. Let’s hope that he accomplishes his goal.