Turkey fails in World Cup qualifiers
Ronaldo celebrates, Kuntz briefly loses his composure
By Felix Meininghaus, Porto
03/25/2022, 07:01 am
Portugal are still in contention for one of the last tickets for the World Cup in Qatar. The first play-off match against Turkey is much more dramatic than it first appears. Now the surprise opponent from North Macedonia is waiting in the final match.
A good hour before the big game kicked off, Stefan Kuntz was in the mixed zone of the Estadio do Dragao. The 59-year-old seemed deeply relaxed. Not a black suit, but white sneakers and a hoodie. With his hands buried deep in his pockets, the ex-national player, who was born in Neunkirchen in the Saarland, joked with his coaching staff and the spokesman for the Turkish Football Association. No one seems like that who sinks into awe in the face of the Herculean task ahead.
Almost three hours later, the trainer was no longer quite so relaxed, but still composed and tidy. Kuntz clapped his hands, ran onto the pitch to form a circle with his players and then walked towards the part of the stands where the few Turkish fans had gathered. It was – if one interpreted events correctly – the appropriate reaction to a defeat in a game that was damn important for the nation. The end of the universe looks different.
The German coach in Turkish service knew how to classify the events appropriately: The challenger had not only started the game as a clear outsider in the sold-out Stadion des Drachen because he had to play an away game in front of 48,010 spectators. To make matters worse, the hosts had technically and running the clearly more experienced specialist staff.
Burak Yilmaz’s nerves fail
That had to be acknowledged, and Kuntz had no problems with that. The balance of power appeared to be locked in place, and yet this eliminatory game had become much more acute in the meantime than the 3-1 result for the Portuguese might suggest. Only once did Kuntz lose his composure for a brief moment when a Turkish reporter confronted him with the statistics of ball possession and shots on goal during the press conference after the game. “Did you see the game?” the German barked into the hall. “We had more chances than the Portuguese.”
You can look at it that way, but in fact Turkey were remarkably inferior for more than an hour before a goal from captain Burak Yilmaz saw them back into the game out of nowhere. Only then did an exchange of blows develop at eye level, which Yilmaz could finally have turned in the right direction for the Turks. But when the Lille striker took a penalty in the 85th minute, he blasted the ball into the Portuguese sky at lightning speed rather than equalizing to make it 2-2.
It was the scene that decided the game, but Kuntz didn’t want to snap the baton at his leader for it. On the contrary, the coach reported that he had assured the tragic hero of the evening, still in a circle on the pitch, “You can be proud to be the captain of this team.” Otherwise, Kuntz did not give the impression that his mission in Turkey had failed with the end of the Qatar mission. On the contrary: “Nobody in Turkey has to be ashamed of this team.” And further: “We are only at the beginning of our path.”
Ronaldo’s number five
In comparison, another protagonist of this evening is on the home stretch of a career that is second to none: Cristiano Ronaldo scored an incredible 115 goals in 185 international matches for Portugal, a world record that could well be good for eternity. Not a single one was against Turkey, however, a blemish – albeit a small one – that the Madeiran man was unwilling to erase even in that all-important eliminator.
It will not matter to the superstar, who is hyped around the world with tens of millions of followers. It is much more important that the 37-year-old gets the chance on Tuesday to make his fifth appearance at the World Cup perfect through the back door.
Then, surprisingly, the opponent is not called Italy, but North Macedonia. The fact that the blatant outsider eliminated the European champion means nothing to Ronaldo: “We’ve only just taken the first step, we still have to take the next one.” With his coach Fernando Santos, “CR7” knows a brother in spirit at his side: “They won against Italy in Italy, who can seriously think that it will be easy.”