What should we expect from Şenol Güneş

The main problem with the Turkish national football team in the last decade has been the lack of a comprehensive strategy. Both on and off the pitch the team has been managed with utterly chaotic methods, leaving Turkish football with no significant achievements for a long time.

Now, Şenol Güneş can at least make a strong impact on the way things are going on the pitch. What needs to be done immediately is to invest in a repeatable, sophisticated strategy and stick to it regardless of results in the short term. Nevertheless, Şenol Güneş must not only go beyond the limits of his own experience, but also the collective, cumulative experience of the Turkish national football team.

Luckily for him, there is already an example of a team which plays with a repeatable, sophisticated strategy - Medipol Başakşehir. After years of hard work and frustration, Abdullah Avcı's team has managed to play with their strictly defensive and organized strategy efficiently, and this categorically differentiated them from the rest of the teams in the Süper Lig. The good news is that Güneş is aware of Başakşehir's model and has called four crucial players from Başakşehir to the national team squad; goalkeeper Mert Günok and midfielders Emre Belözoğlu, İrfan Can Kahveci and Mahmut Tekdemir. He put Günok, Belözoğlu snd Tekdemir in the starting line-up and would have put Kahveci in as well if he had not been injured in training camp.

The reason why Güneş opted for Başakşehir's midfield trio is simple; they know how to carry the game from defense to offense and keep the center of the team organized. No three great individual talents put together can give the benefit of the cooperation of these three give right now. Güneş can build a game around these three since they already offer a solid core for all defensive and offensive actions. At this point, it is up to Güneş to decide whether he will follow Avcı and play with a defensive strategy or build a more attacking strategy.

I think that offensive actions, due to less time and space, are inherently harder than defensive actions. It is easier to stop your opponent from scoring than scoring against them. Since Güneş arrived in the wake of the crucial Euro 2020 qualifications, it would be better for him to stay away from deep waters and focus on creating a defensively solid team. For now, what matters is to create a team that can play with the same strategy two games in a row and detailed offensive schemes can come later.