Montella, who reacted to the criticism directed at him for the Australian defeat by saying “I am more Turkish than you” at the press conference held one day before the match, unfortunately went into the fateful match in San Francisco with a deep plan (!) that no one could understand. I wanted to summarize for you the big plan that the citizens gathered in the squares, in front of their screens at 6 in the morning, sacrificed their sleep and watched in a dazed state and therefore missed it.
After Australia, whom we “memorized”, we made our preparations against our rival Paraguay with Venezuela, the only South American country that has not been able to participate in the World Cup throughout its history. We knew it would be a physically intense match, but it all ends in the head. When I say “in the head” I am not talking about image changes; First of all, we need to get rid of the criticism that shackles these football players. After all, this golden generation ended the 24-year longing, right?
We broke our national team record with the number of corner kicks, but we could not get a result. We were on the verge of falling victim to transition games, as every player who came to the ball wanted to do one more dribbling. We did not give up our offensive approach based on improvised shots. While we took a total of 62 shots in the two matches we played, we could not put any of them into the net. It is necessary to say this without being deceived by the attractiveness of numbers and statistics; This farewell was definitely not a misfortune.
We arrived on the field with 11 players who had dreams, but we could not show any spirit as a team. Everyone who wanted to score that goal that would go down in history felt for the goal one by one, and “that moment” never came. This was largely a side effect of inexperience. In short, we said goodbye to the World Cup, which we participated in with individual talent, with our individual mistakes.
The ghost of this World Cup will haunt us for the next 4 years. We will see the real light when we learn to exorcise that ghost together with brooms in our hands. Maybe this was the point that Turkish Montella missed. Wolves don’t hunt alone.