Turkey meets Czech Republic – the match in the live ticker

Turkey is in the knockout round of a European Championship for the first time since 2008. Vincenzo Montella’s team secured second place in Group F with a 2-1 win against the Czech Republic.

Turkey and the Czech Republic have met twice at a European Championship. Both times the Turks left the field as winners. It wasn’t quite as dramatic in Hamburg as the 2008 finals, when the Turks turned a 0-2 deficit into a 3-2 victory in the last quarter of an hour and thus moved into the knockout round. But this game was also a tough one.

After Hakan Calhanoglu scored the opening goal in the 51st minute, everything seemed to point to a quiet evening for Turkey. At that point, the 2002 World Cup third-place team had already been playing with a man advantage for more than half an hour. Antonin Barak had received his second yellow card after 20 minutes for a foul on Salih Özcan and was sent off by referee Istvan Kovacs. The Czech had received the first, harsh warning for holding.

However, the Turks almost gave away this advantage a short time later in the person of Kenan Yildiz. The 19-year-old from Juventus Turin stepped on Robin Hranac’s Achilles tendon with an open sole and was shown a yellow card. Just a minute later (!), Kovacs judged the Turk’s elbow against Vladimir Coufal’s head not to be worthy of a yellow card.

However, the Czechs did not let these setbacks get them down. Before the half-time whistle, they had the best chance of the entire first half through David Jurasek. After a counterattack, the Hoffenheim player was stopped by Mert Günok in front of the goal.

It was precisely Günok who scored the equalizer: the Turkish goalie dropped the ball after 66 minutes in an aerial duel with Thomas Chory. Thomas Soucek brought the tension back into the game with the 1:1.

In the final phase, the Czechs, despite being outnumbered, pushed for the winning goal that would have taken them into the round of 16. But it was Turkey who managed to make it 2-1 after a counterattack in injury time through Cenk Tosun.

The report of the other game:

Czech Republic – Türkiye 1:2 (0:0)
Hamburg. – 47,683 viewers. – SR Kovacs (ROU).
Tore: 51. Calhanoglu 0:1. 66. Soucek 1:1. 94. Tosun 1:2.
Czech Republic: Stanek (55. Kovar); Holes, Hranac, Krejci; Coufal, Soucek, Provod (75th Lingr), David Jurasek (81st Matej Jurasek); Barak; Chytil (55. Kuchta), Hlozek (55. Chory).
Türkiye: Gunok; Müldür, Akaydin, Demiral, Kadioğlu; Güler (76th Tosun), Yüksek (63rd Yokuslu), Calhanoglu (87th Kökcü), Özcan (46th Ayhan), Yildiz (76th Aktürkoglu); Yilmaz.
Remarks: Türkiye without Bardakci (suspended). 20. Yellow-red card against Barak.
Warnings: 11. Barak. 31. Özcan. 35. Schick (on the bench). 37. Yildiz. 49. Yüksek. 65. Günok. 66. Calhanoglu. 68. Cakir (on the bench). 81. Müldür. 85. Jaros (on the bench). 85. Cerv (on the bench). 85. Akaydin. 91. Krejci. 95. Ayhan. 95. Kökcü. (abu/sda)