It’s the 59th minute of the game. There’s a corner to be taken, and Arda Guler strolls over to take it. As he approaches the section of the stadium where Austria’s noisiest fans are gathered, the confetti is unleashed: a hailstorm of beer cups flying at him, near him, on him. The rain, heavy all night, has swelled to an epic peak. Turkey lead 1-0. Guler stands alone, raising an arm to the deluge, not drowning but waving.
And of course, we knew all about Guler already. We all saw the long-range goal against Georgia, saw his late-season bloom at Real Madrid, saw the breathless tributes from teammates and coaches, followed the origin story of this precocious left-footed teenager all the way from his childhood at Fenerbahce. We knew what he could do with a football. What we didn’t know – what nobody yet knew – was when he could do it.
Last December, at the Golden Boy awards in Turin, Jude Bellingham warned everyone that Guler would one day follow in his footsteps as European football’s greatest young player. Bellingham has seen what Guler can do in training, seen the way he has fought his way back from injury, seen him putting in the extra gym hours. But even Bellingham couldn’t have known how Guler would react to this noise, this hostility, this pressure, this pressure.
In fact, the emblematic moment of Guler’s evening takes place a couple of minutes earlier. Before the perfectly arced corner from which Merih Demiral would score Turkey’s second goal, before Guler turns and cups a glorious ear to the Austrian fans, before the torment and the triumph of the denouement.
Austria have started the second half well, and are beginning to home in on an equaliser. After Marko Arnautovic is the latest to go close, Guler turns and yells in anger towards the Turkish bench, arms spread wide, barking instructions. Exactly what he says is lost to the deafening din of the Leipzig night. But the message is clear: enough. We need some help here. There is a commotion on the touchline. Vincenzo Montella throws on the muscle of Salih Ozcan in midfield. And a couple of minutes later Turkey are celebrating a 2-0 lead, with Guler the orchestrator of both goals.
Were this an isolated series of coincidences, we could probably leave it there. But on a night of thrashing chaos and lawless combat, Guler was somehow not merely the creator but the conductor, not just the passer but the pasha, the lungs and the heart and the generalissimo energy behind Turkish football’s greatest night in a generation.
And this, on reflection, was the part we did not know: whether on the biggest stage, in the absence of the suspended Hakan Calhanoglu, against one of the best teams in the tournament, one of Europe’s brightest young players could lead. Whether the thriller could also be a killer. We got our answer within seconds.
It was Guler’s sliding through ball from which Turkey won the corner that produced Demiral’s opening goal, a goal that for all its rich farce owed itself to yet another immaculate delivery. At which point, Guler moved into a subtly different gear. For the next half hour he calmed the mayhem: dropping back from his false 9 position to take the ball at close quarters, at times even occupying the quarterback role he used to play in youth football. He almost scored with a ridiculous 50-yard shot, a similar effort to one against Osasuna in March that rattled the crossbar.
And even when he wasn’t involved, he still kind of was: constantly pointing, directing, raging. He waved an angry fist at Mert Muldur for messing up his final ball. He harangued Mert Gunok for an aimless goal kick. On occasion there were the flashes of the same petulance we once saw on the touchline at Madrid, when after seeing Carlo Ancelotti making his fifth and final substitution, he hurled his bib to the ground and stormed down the tunnel.
Yet the startling part of Guler’s performance here was actually how little he resembled the Guler of Madrid, a richly gifted kid who also inspires certain protective feelings, who at times during his debut season appeared to be made entirely of twine and twigs, one of those careers that can really go either way.
In this respect he could scarcely hope for a better manager than Montella, a coach who just adores talent, who loves building a team around it and seeing it thrive, whether a young Mohamed Salah at Fiorentina or an ageing Mario Balotelli at Adana Demirspor. Who will throw on a half-fit Guler for 20 minutes in a lost cause against Portugal because, you know, why not?
Even after Guler was withdrawn with 13 minutes to go, Turkey still had many deaths to die. Austria laid siege. Gunok made an incredible save in the dying seconds. The quarter-final will take place in Berlin, a Turkey away from Turkey, an occasion the likes of which few will have dared to dream. They are the outsiders on this stage now. But at least they now have a player capable of owning it.
