Coach confident in Turkish ability, but asks for luck against Portugal
We have a game plan and we have to focus on it. We looked at that Serbia game (against Portugal), but we’ve spent a lot of time. We have to think about football day by day and, on the other hand, we need to be lucky in the (Thursday) game”, observed the 59-year-old German coach during the preview press.
Then, when asked about his counterpart Fernando Santos, Kuntz praised the Portuguese coach and has no doubts that he is the right person to know how to solve this type of game.
“He has coached the Portugal team since 2014. Of course I have the greatest respect for mine, he has been in Portugal for eight years and I haven’t even been there for eight months (without a coach load). He is very experienced, he has worked in Greece in several countries and knows how to solve this type of games (one-handed)”, he compared.
For the coach, Turkey has “the ability to show that it can compete against great teams” and says that its players know how they can stop the Portuguese team, which is not limited to captain Cristiano Ronaldo. On the other hand, he does not consider that the absences of João Cancelo, side and Rúben Dias can bring any advantage to the visitors.
“We are not going against Ronaldo, but against a team with 11 players, who are good and strong. Players who will play (in those places) will do their best, will do their best”, he assured.
Striker Burak Yilmaz, a teammate at Lille of defenders José Fonte and Tiago Djaló, was also present in the preview of the match to express his confidence in a happy ending for Turkey.
“Our entire group wants to go to the Worlds. going to the World Cup we are going to lose and we are ready, we do not believe that we will pass tomorrow (Thursday)”, he argued.
About the duel he may have with his friend Fonte, Yilmaz said that “in the field there is no friendship, because they are against each other”.
Portugal and Turkey will play on Thursday, from 7:45 pm, at Estádio do Dragão, in Porto, in a meeting of the semi-finals of path C of the European ‘play-offs’ for access to the final phase of the 2022 World Cup, which will be led by German Daniel Siebert.
Whoever wins this duel receives, on Tuesday (March 29), the winner of the clash between Italy and North Macedonia, which will also face each other on Thursday, in Palermo. If Portugal passes, it will be at Dragão again.
Portugal is looking for the eighth presence in World Cups, and the fifth in a row, after 1966, 1986, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018, while the Turks are looking for only the third, after 2002.