We identified a very shallow player pool, a lack of pitches, inadequate coaches, and even more inadequate talent scouts as the reasons why we failed to achieve what we expected in football, and made numerical comparisons with countries that have been successful in this regard.
The Factors Behind the Debacle
Now, moving from the general to the specific, I would like to share my thoughts on the debacle we experienced at the 2026 World Cup. After the tournament ended, many people who knew of my interest in football and my past experiences asked me whether “the absence of a psychological counselor on the team had any impact on this result.” I did not respond to these questions in order to avoid speculation.
No major event occurs because of “a single reason” or because of “a reason articulated by someone no one had previously heard of.” Major events occur as a result of numerous small events that accumulate one on top of another, until the glass finally overflows. Mines explode according to this pattern, airplanes crash for reasons that fit this pattern, and patients die in emergency departments or intensive care units in ways that follow this pattern. Even a person who is electrocuted on a rain-soaked road loses their life for this reason. In short, the reason the glass overflows is not the last drop, but the fact that the glass is already full. I will now share several of the factors that, as far as I know, filled the glass.
An important factor, as many people have pointed out, was holding the training camp in Arizona. We know that adapting to temperatures above forty degrees is extremely difficult and affects the efficiency of training sessions. What should have been done was to choose a different and suitable location at our own expense, rather than accepting the opportunity offered to us by FIFA, as was done during the 1998 European Championship. Failing to demonstrate this will proved costly.
A second factor was the unprecedented violation of the privacy of the training camp. The preparation camp for an important tournament needs to be carefully planned in terms of social relations. The fundamental objective is to ensure that the athletes do not lose their focus. During the years when I was involved, the only person present at the camp apart from the footballers was the board member responsible for the national teams. Even the Federation President would come with prior notice, meet with the footballers for ten minutes, wish them good luck, and leave after having a meal with the technical staff. Yet it is known that the Arizona camp became a fairground, with all board members, their relatives, and children spending long hours at the camp and taking endless selfies with the footballers. It was even said that all the people from Of who could afford the travel expenses came to the camp to take selfies.
Another factor was the uncontrolled amount of time spent at the camp by the footballers’ families. While the intention was to create a family atmosphere, it was reported in the media that some footballers’ fathers had raised their voices in order to protect their children’s interests. All these developments distracted the footballers and contributed to filling the glass. It was also reported in the media that some players were speaking loudly and that this created unrest within the team.
Another factor was the pressure created by the high expectations that had been generated. When the group draw was made, public expectations were that the path to the quarter-finals was open and that even reaching the semi-finals would not be a surprise. Campaigns supported by the “Century of Türkiye Vision” created high expectations and pressure on the players. In fact, pressure is a privilege, but professional support is necessary to manage it. The Head Coach stated that he would fulfill this function himself and that he did not need a psychological counselor. This deficiency was also one of the factors that filled the glass.
Following the Austria match, which was widely believed to be a match that we would inevitably win, the technical staff also panicked and made obvious mistakes, conceding a goal in the second minute and losing to a team that had played with ten men for a half and was performing far below its own capacity. The national team took a total of 62 shots in its first two matches and failed to score. An American journalist turned this situation into a joke by saying, “If you are going hunting with the Turks, walk behind them.”
Without a doubt, I do not want to address the on-field mistakes made by the Head Coach, who was one of the two leading figures responsible for this result, particularly in the second match. However, the coach should have intervened in each of the issues I listed above. He could have refused to accept the camp location, prevented the camp from turning into a fairground, limited the interaction between families and players, sought assistance in managing the pressure on the players, and prevented one player’s excessively loud voice from negatively affecting his teammates. Instead, he failed to demonstrate the will to do these things and chose to submit to his superior.
Another failure by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) that will go down in history was the absence of a single Turkish referee among the 52 referees, 88 assistant referees, and 30 VAR referees selected from 50 countries. Ironically, Cüneyt Çakır, who is regarded as an unwanted man in Türkiye, is a FIFA referee instructor.
Conclusion
All of this resulted in our being described in humiliating terms as “the second team to exit the World Cup after Haiti.” As I stated above, none of these factors alone would have produced the outcome we experienced. However, the reasons we have listed, together with many others of which we are unaware, filled the glass and ultimately produced the disaster we witnessed.
Without a doubt, those who lived through the process have much to say. However, without delving behind the scenes or listening to gossip, I have tried to list only some of the facts I obtained from publicly available sources. At this point, what is expected is for everyone who bears responsibility for this process to acknowledge the failure, apologize, and resign. Instead, the person who was the primary authority responsible for the process called on the Minister of Justice to initiate legal proceedings against those who criticized him. This means that no lessons have been learned from what happened and that, in the future, we will follow the same path and reach the same outcome.
