From Leicester to Antalya, still a long way to go

The Turkish national team showed a promising performance against Sweden on Tuesday night, but there are still a lot of problematic issues about the team's performance. As I predicted before the game, the Turkish side started the game with a high pace, took the offensive from the first minute and created some opportunities with shock-presses. Adding to that, throughout the game, ball possession was in favor of Turkey and Sweden could not control the game for more than a few occasional offensive waves. Thus, the game was an encouraging one for Turkish football. But, I have to mention some fundamental problems that threaten the team's chances for EURO 2016 in France.

First of all, although I appreciate the Turkish national team's coach Fatih Terim's effort to create an offensive organization, which resembles Leicester City's approach, unfortunately the team still relies on individual talents rather than well built, swift counter-attacks like Leicester. At the beginning of the game, we saw the Turkish national team make six or seven passes to cross their opponent's half, but those were later left as occasional events when Turkey decided to play long balls to target man, Cenk Tosun.

This hybrid approach decreased the utility of the quasi-Leicester game significantly, given that the long balls were too direct and chaotic to create organized counter-attacks. The playmaker positioned in the defense, Selçuk İnan, often opted for playing the ball directly to the striker rather than crossing to the other side with more men. Thus, both defensive builds ups, vital for the main strategy, became functionless and players in the midfield felt they were no longer obliged to circulate the ball. Goalkeeper Volkan Babacan also had kicked the ball directly to the other side during the game, which left no space for the notion of strategy at all. Therefore, the offensive capacity of the team was reduced severely and except for some shiny moments, the only hope for the national team to score was chaos, which is a highly ineffective way to find opportunities.

Secondly, the fact that Arda Turan, Barcelona's successful playmaker and the real playmaker of the Turkish side in offense, acted too independently was a serious obstacle for establishing fluid and constant attacks. In Barcelona, Arda knows his duty is to build a bridge between defense and offense while organizing the core of the team's offensive waves, and that is how things should work on the national team too. Head coach Terim should assign more concrete objectives to Arda, like always being a passing option near the opponent's penalty box or be the center of offensive organizations, rather than leaving him free and expecting some individual solutions to offensive dullness.

Finally, as Terim tries to build a rational strategy, at least his team can demonstrate some examples of it occasionally, and we can say the national team saw the light, but there is still a long way to go to settle an organized, self-sufficient game. The crucial point here is whether the Turkish players opted for some short-cuts like long balls on their own, or, was it an order from Terim? The former can easily be cured, but the latter is lethal for a fragile and emotional team like Turkey. Thus, the Turkish side still has a great chance, and can achieve much more than expected in EURO 2016 if Terim invests in a rational game play.