This is the 59th minute of the game. There was a corner that needed to be taken and Arda Guler slowly walked over to take it. As he approached the area of the stadium where the loudest fans in Austria gathered, confetti was unleashed: a hail of beer glasses flew towards him, approached him and fell on him. The downpour all night has reached epic proportions. Türkiye leads 1-0. Guler stood alone, raising his arms to the flood. He was not drowning, but waving.
Of course, we already know everything about Gullah. We all saw the long-range goal against Georgia, saw him blossom at the end of the season at Real Madrid, saw the breathtaking tributes from teammates and coaches, watched the precocious left-footed teenager grow up from his childhood at Fenerbahce The origin story that begins. We know what he can do with the football. What we don’t know—what no one knows yet—is when He can do it.
Jude Bellingham warned everyone at the Golden Boy Awards in Turin last December that Gule would one day follow in his footsteps and become the greatest young player in European football. Bellingham saw what Guhler was capable of in training, saw the way he bounced back from injuries and saw the extra hours he put in in the gym. But even Bellingham didn’t know how Gulle would react to this noise, this hostility, this pressure, This kind of pressure.
In fact, the iconic moment of Gullah’s night had happened just minutes earlier. Before Merih Demiral scored a perfectly curling corner kick to score Turkey’s second goal; before Guler turned around and pricked his ears to the Austrian fans; before the final torture and victory Before.
Austria got off to a good start in the second half and began to equalize. After Marko Arnautovic’s late approach, Guler turned to the Turkish bench and shouted angrily, spreading his arms and shouting instructions. Everything he said was drowned out by the deafening din of the Leipzig night. But the message is clear: enough is enough. We need some help here. There was a commotion on the sideline. Vincenzo Montella played Salih Ozcan in the midfield. Minutes later, Türkiye celebrated a 2-0 lead, with Gule scoring twice.
If this were a string of isolated coincidences, we might be able to leave it at that. But on a night filled with chaos and lawless fighting, Guler was in some ways not just the creator but also the conductor, not just the passer but the pasha, the man behind one of the greatest nights in Turkish football in a generation. Lungs and heart and the energy of the Grand Marshal.
In retrospect, this is the part we didn’t know: on the biggest stage, in the absence of Hakan Calhanoglu, against one of the best teams in the tournament and one of the brightest young players in Europe Whether one can lead. Could this thriller also be a killer. We got our answer within seconds.
It was Guler’s glide that won Turkey a corner kick, and Demiral scored the first goal, albeit one fraught with farce, thanks to another perfectly placed shot. At this point, Gule entered a subtly different stage. For the next half hour, he calmed down the chaos: dropping back from the false 9 position, catching the ball in close quarters and sometimes even playing the same quarterback role he played in youth football. He almost scored with a ridiculous 50-yard shot, similar to the one that hit the crossbar against Osasuna in March.
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Even when he’s not involved, he’s still like that: constantly pointing, directing, angry. He shook an angry fist at Merte Mardour for messing up his final goal. He went on a tirade about an aimless goal kick from Mert Gunok. At times, we saw the same temper on Madrid’s touchline, watching Carlo Ancelotti throw his bib to the ground and storm into the tunnel after making his fifth and final substitution.
However, the surprising part of Guler’s performance here is actually how similar he is to Madrid’s Guler, a talented kid who also inspires a certain sense of protectiveness in his first season. Sometimes it seems like it’s made entirely of twine and twigs, where a career can really go in any direction.
In this regard, he could hardly have hoped for a better coach than Montella, a coach who loves talent and loves to build a team around it and see it flourish, whether it be Fiorentina’s youth Mohamed Salah is still the aging Mario Balotelli of Adana Demirspor. Who’s going to give a semi-fit Gule 20 minutes against Portugal because, you know, why not?
Even if Guler withdrew with 13 minutes left in the game, there were still many deaths in Türkiye. Austrian siege. Gunnock made an incredible save in the final seconds. The quarter-finals will be held in Berlin, far away from Turkey, an occasion few would dare to dream of. They are outsiders on this stage now. But at least they now have a player capable of owning it.
