Turkey Beat Czech Republic
Three Goals in Final 15 Minutes for a Winning Turkish Team
Euro 2008:
Wow. There can be few games in a major tournament to match the unpredictability and emotion of this one. The Do-or-Die playoff that determines the team to come runners-up of Group A seemed destined to go to the Czechs as they were comfortably cruising on a 2 - 0 lead on the 75th.
Jan Koller slotted home a routine header after a cross from Zdenek Grygera on the 34th and the Czech Republic doubled their lead on the 62nd when a cross from Libor Sionko on the right was converted by left winger Jaroslav Plasil on the far post.
And the remainder of the game should have been a matter of holding on to wait for quater final confirmation. And with Petr Cech, arguably the best keeper in the world, standing guard in the Czech net, winning seemed guaranteed.
But in the most fantastic turnaround of the tournament, and of many before, Turkey's forces won three goals in quarter of an hour.
Hamit Altintop made a break down the right in the 75th and crossed to Arda Turan who slipped it low and past Cech.
The Czechs didn't appear fazed by the goal and played a tight defense to keep their lead. Their fans were still bouncing happy in the stadium. Nobody was expecting what may come to be the biggest mistake of Cech's career.
Alintop made the cross again and the authoritative Cech came out of his goal to make a standard save. But he dropped it. He dropped the standard save, sending the ball to a grateful Nihat Kahveci who sent it home into an empty net.
No group stage game in a major tournament has been settled by a penalty shootout and Nihat ensured it wouldn't happen in this game as he grabbed a stunning goal with less than a minute until injury time.
The Turkish fans went wild, as it seems did Turkish keeper Volkan Demirel, who managed to get himself sent off for pushing Jan Koller over, right in line of the ref's vision. The emotion of the closing minutes must have got the better of him.
So, with less than five minutes of the game remaining, the Czech Republic were leading 1 - 0 and somehow ended up losing it 3 - 2.
Czech boss Karel Brueckner admitted, "You cannot make mistakes like that," referring to the mistakes that lead to Turkey's equalising and winning goals. He added, "We surrendered to Turkey's pressure."
Fatih Terim said after the game, that if his team were to lose, it might as well be by four goals as two. At half-time he went all in by sending on Colin Kazim-Richards to attack and putting more than half the team into an attacking position. The cavalier tactics obviously worked.
Turkey:
Demirel, Altintop, Gungor (Asik 65), Cetin, Balta, Topal (Kazim-Richards 57 ), Aurelio, Turan, Tuncay, Nihat, Senturk (Sarioglu 46)
Czech Republic:
Cech, Grygera, Ujfalusi, Rozehnal, Jankulovski, Sionko (Ulcek 84), Matejovsky (Jarolim 39), Galasek, Polak, Plasil (Kadlec 80), Koller
