– Turkish madness sweeps Austria
Turkey will play, almost “at home”, the quarter-finals of the European Championship in Germany. It beat Austria 2-1 in the 8th, in Leipzig.
Merih Demiral scored a decisive double for Turkey against Austria.
AFP
Subscribe now and enjoy the audio playback feature.
BotTalk
A record, first of all. The Turks opened the scoring in the 57th second, the fastest goal scored in the knockout phase of a Euro. This “cap” goal (corner, rebound on two defenders, bizarre save by the goalkeeper) scored by Demiral weighed heavily in this match. Because Austria did not manage to put as much intensity into the recovery as it would have liked. Also because the technical ease of its opponent allowed it to regularly loosen the grip.
Ralf Rangnick’s men should have done better. Because they often had control of the ball, already. But also because up until the opponent’s 16-meter line, they did almost everything wrong. The problem is that they piled up the misses or the bad choices. Baumgartner must wonder in particular how he did not manage to push it to the back of the net in the 5th minute. It was him again, just before the break (45th + 2), who missed an elephant in a corridor.
At this point you will find additional external content. If you agree to cookies being placed by external providers and personal data being transmitted to them, you must allow all cookies and display the external content directly.
Allow cookiesMore informations
Gregoritsch, who came on at half-time and was alone 10 metres from the Turkish goal, managed to miss the goal (47th). Four minutes later, it was Arnautovic who stumbled on the foot of the excellent goalkeeper Günok. And as Demiral scored twice, again from a corner, on the hour mark, everything became too complicated. Gregoritsch’s 1-2 in the 66th minute only served to revive the regrets, which were immense because Austria had been the pleasant surprise of the first round. Especially since Günok stole the equaliser from Baumgartner at the end of stoppage time.
Having not qualified for the last five World Cups and having been eliminated in the first round of the last two European Championships, Turkey is revisiting its recent history and, what’s more, it has a future. Güler and Yildiz, both 19 years old, were starters. To find the trace of two players under 20 years old lining up together at the kick-off of a knockout match during a Euro or a World Cup, you have to go back to Hungary-Denmark in… 1964, with the hopefuls Ferenc Bene and Zoltan Varga on the Hungarian side.
Usually, after the first round, the atmosphere in the stadiums goes down a notch. The fault is the quota of tickets allocated by UEFA. But in Leipzig, it was a bit the opposite. The RB Arena was invaded by the very many Turks who live nearby and it only took a few seconds for the supporters of the “Moon with the Stars” to catch fire. Okay, it’s true, they didn’t need that. The Austrians must still have their ears ringing. And it’s not about to stop and it’s in Berlin that the madness is expected in the quarter-finals, against the Netherlands.
«Euro 2024»
Every day after the match, receive our newsletter with our selection of articles on the highlights of the competitions.
Other newsletters
To log in
Found an error? Please report it to us.
0 comments
