Turkiye captain Hakan Calhanoglu bizarrely doubled down on his failed pre-game sledge declaring his side would dominate Australia after a 2-0 loss to open their World Cup.
Calhanoglu said pre-match his “more talented” side would “dominate” the clash but the Socceroos ran out comfortable winners after goals from Nestory Irankunda and Connor Metcalfe.
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Turkiye controlled possession as they tried to break through the Aussie defence, and get past Patrick Beach in goal, but they rarely produced a serious chance.
Yet asked about his pre-match comments on Sunday, Calhanoglu asked “We didn’t dominate?” Calhanoglu replied.
The reply from a journalist: “No, I don’t think you did. Possession sure.”
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But the Turkish skipper said: “I don’t think they did the same like you. We dominated today, Australia was just behind, defending good.
“Two long goals, they scored. It was our mistakes.
“If you go through the whole 90 minutes, and you don’t score… it means you have to always be focused.
“Never give up because I think we did a good game, just we didn’t score.”
Irankunda was happy to poke fun at Calhanoglu’s failed sledge post-match, though.
“These lot (Turkiye), they came, they did their talking but they couldn’t back it on the field,” Irankunda said according to Football360.
“We got the win at the end of the day, and people can talk all they want, but if they’re not gonna put a performance out there on the pitch then there’s no point in talking.”
He also said immediately after the game: “Yeah it was extra motivation. Obviously we don’t like to hear people talk bad about us, because we are a great team.
“They underestimated us a lot and we showed them that we can play. Obviously they kept the ball a lot more, but who scored the goals? We scored the goals.
“We showed them that we can play football.”
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American pundits could be facing the same fate with the Socceroos to take on the USA in a likely group-deciding match next Saturday morning.
“At the end of the day you’ve got to let these people talk,” Irankunda said of their criticism.
“They can talk all they want but at the end of the day we are going to put our performance on the field, and we’ve done that today.
“So we’ve got to focus on the next game but we started great now.”