The last time Turkey went to a World Cup, Hakan Şükür scored 11 seconds into the third-place match and the country finished third overall — one of the great underdog runs in the tournament's history. That was 2002. Arda Güler, currently Real Madrid's most exciting young attacker, was one year old. The entire current squad grew up watching YouTube highlights of a team they were too young to remember in real time.
Twenty-four years is a long wait, and Turkey have spent most of it flirting with qualification and falling short. Vincenzo Montella — yes, the Italian, the former Roma and Fiorentina striker — took over in 2023 and finally got the balance right: Çalhanoğlu conducting from midfield, Güler and Yıldız drifting in from the half-spaces, Kerem Aktürkoğlu (who scored the winner in Pristina) arriving at the back post. They finished qualifying 6-1-1 and beat Kosovo 1-0 in the playoff final in March to clinch the spot.
Group D is the host country's group — the United States, Paraguay, Australia, Turkey — and the schedule ends with USA-Turkey in a venue that will sound like Istanbul. Whatever happens, this is a generational moment. A country that has been waiting a quarter-century is coming back, with the youngest, most talented attack they've had since 2002. If they beat Paraguay in the opener, the whole tournament tilts. Keep your eyes on the number 10 in red.
The 21-year-old Real Madrid playmaker who has become the face of Turkish football and might be the most talented 10 the country has produced since the 2002 generation. Left-footed, operates in half-spaces, delivers a free kick that curves like he's flicking it around a corner with a wet towel. Scored the goal that beat Kosovo in the playoff final to clinch qualification. Real Madrid are building an attack around him next year. Turkey is building a World Cup around him this summer.
The Inter Milan captain who reinvented himself at 28 as a deep-lying playmaker and became the best regista in Serie A. Two Scudetti, a Champions League final, and at 32 the on-field brain of Vincenzo Montella's team. He will set every tempo in Group D. Free-kick specialist, penalty-taker, and the kind of captain who shouts in four languages — German, Turkish, Italian, English — usually in the same sentence.
The 20-year-old Juventus forward who grew up in Germany (Regensburg), came through Bayern Munich's youth system, chose Turkey over Germany at 17, and now wears Juve's number 10 shirt — the one Del Piero and Platini wore. Dribbles like an old-school street player. One of the five most-hyped young forwards in Europe right now. The post-2002 Turkish generation, in one person.
Turkish breakfast (kahvaltı) is not a meal, it's a three-hour architectural project: a dozen small plates — olives black and green, cucumber and tomato still warm from the sun, white cheese, kaşar, honey and kaymak (clotted cream), a sucuk sausage sizzling in a copper menemen pan, a wicker basket of simit (sesame rings), fresh bread torn by hand, and black tea in tulip-shaped glasses refilled until you surrender. Then kebabs — not the fast-food kind: döner sliced from a vertical spit, adana from the grill, Iskender (döner over pide bread with tomato and melted butter) — mezze plates, baklava dense with pistachios, Turkish coffee thick enough to stand a spoon in, and rakı (aniseed spirit) turning cloudy white in the glass as you add water. You do not leave a Turkish table full. You leave it defeated.
Cafe Istanbul in Plano (1915 N Central Expwy) has been serving real Turkish food to DFW for 18 years — lahmacun that the Infatuation called the best in North Texas, a full mezze spread, and the only restaurant in the area licensed to pour Turkish rakı. Belly dancing Friday and Saturday nights at 9 p.m., which is more tournament-weekend than it sounds. For a second option, Turkish Cafe & Lounge (also Plano) does excellent Iskender kebab and proper Turkish coffee in a copper cezve.
A soundtrack for the matches, the pregame, and the afterparty.
Turkish support is loud in a way American stadiums are not prepared for. Red with the white crescent-and-star on every flag, every scarf, every face — and a chant, "Türkiye! Türkiye!" that is not a song so much as a rolling percussive wave. The Ayyıldızlı Tim ("the Crescent-Star Team") traveling support drums, whistles, and flares from warmup to final whistle. Expect tavla (backgammon) boards on stadium concourses, simit sellers outside the ground if the host city has any Turkish diaspora at all, and a loud, brotherly hospitality toward any neutral willing to sit with them. They have been waiting 24 years for this. They intend to be heard.
Hakan Şükür scored 11 seconds into Turkey's 2002 third-place match against South Korea — still the fastest goal in World Cup history, 24 years later. The current Turkish squad was mostly not born yet. Arda Güler turned one year old the month Şükür kicked off.