After defeating Iceland 3-1 in the second match of UEFA Nations B League 4th Group, Turkey National Football Team’s coach Vincenzo Montella made a statement after the match.
Referring to the performance of Kerem Aktürkoğlu, who scored three goals in the match, Vincenzo Montella made the following assessments:
“This time I will provoke. I don’t know if you noticed, but Kerem Aktürkoğlu played the last 10 minutes as a forward. He scored his 3rd goal as a forward. It didn’t say 9 on his back, but he scored like 9. Let me give you another example! Barış also played as a forward in a very important match. He played as a forward in the Croatia match and scored a goal. A goal is a goal. It doesn’t matter where you score from, the important thing is to score a goal.
When a footballer scores 3 goals, what can you say, you can only congratulate him. He really showed a magnificent performance. Not only in terms of goals, the goals were beautiful but in general, he had everything in terms of performance. I try to talk to all our footballers with our translator and Kerem is one of them. So when I talked to him, I saw that he was more comfortable, I told him that he could score. Because I had such an expectation but I did not expect him to score three goals. When he scored 3 goals like that, I was really happy. Because I think he deserved it.”
“WE SLOWED DOWN AT SOME MOMENTS”
Montella, who emphasized that the whole team played very well against Iceland, said, “I just have to add this. We slowed down a little between the 25th and 30th minutes, we slowed down the tempo a little, but we need to understand this now. We actually need to leave our mark in those minutes during the match because he was completely in our hands. You saw Eren for the first time today, I can say that he played very well with me. In fact, I went to watch him in Switzerland. In other words, I wanted to follow him in such physical matches at an international level. That’s why I was very pleased with his performance. Today, both our left and right chain did very well in general. It was a match in which we played fast, we slowed down at some moments. I can say that we showed a generally satisfactory performance.”
Montella explained that September 9th is important not only for Izmir but for all of Türkiye, and continued as follows:
“We are very, very pleased to make everyone happy with such a victory. Our fans started their support from the hotel to the stadium and brought it all the way here. That’s why they gave us extra strength in a great atmosphere today and they also had a share in this victory.”
