{"id":736730,"date":"2026-06-14T21:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T21:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/736730\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T21:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T21:06:09","slug":"moral-victory-for-turkiye-world-cup-captain-forgets-how-football-works-after-socceroos-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/736730\/","title":{"rendered":"Moral victory for Turkiye? World Cup captain forgets how football works after Socceroos loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been plenty of salty reactions to the Socceroos\u2019 stunning 2-0 win over Turkiye in Vancouver.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But one of the more curious has come from Turkiye captain Hakan \u00c7alhano\u011flu who may well have been an English cricket captain in a past life.<\/p>\n

Pre-game \u00c7alhano\u011flu boldy declared his team would dominate the Aussies<\/a> and after the humbling defeat he was sticking to his guns, perhaps still in a state of shock at a result which sees Turkiye\u2019s World Cup<\/a> hopes precariously placed after just one match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe dominated today, Australia was just behind, defending good,\u201d the Inter Milan star told journalists after the match.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Socceroos stun T\u00fcrkiye in FIFA World Cup opener<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTwo long goals, they scored, it was our mistakes,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you control all the game the whole 90 minutes and you don\u2019t score\u2026 it means you have to always be focused.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we did a good game, just we didn\u2019t score.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Turkiye did not score despite having 30 shots on goal compared with just 8 from Australia, such was the quality of the Socceroos\u2019 impenetrable defence.<\/p>\n

So sorry about this Hakan, but there are no moral victories in the World Cup, no prizes for possession – it\u2019s goals that matter and on that rather important metric, well, one team dominated and they were in gold jerseys, not red.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Stars and swipes: USA pundit Mike Grella mocks Socceroos World Cup chances – again<\/a><\/p>\n

Next up for the Socceroos comes the USA on Saturday morning Australian time, with hopefully a little more humility on display from the co-hosts, if not their media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There have been plenty of salty reactions to the Socceroos\u2019 stunning 2-0 win over Turkiye in Vancouver.\u00a0 But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-736730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}