Turkey Without Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Kenan Yıldız: Montella Faces a Squad-Depth Test

Vincenzo Montella walked into the press conference and did what most coaches in his position avoid: he read out the absentees before answering a single tactical question. Hakan Çalhanoğlu. Kenan Yıldız. Mert Müldür. Three names across three lines of the pitch, representing three entirely different kinds of ability. Then he added a note about Orkun Kökçü, carrying a minor injury, still with the squad, still training to try to be ready.

What stands out is not the list itself. It is the way Montella chose to release it. He opened with bad news, then moved to a message of trust: the team believes in the whole list, and if a player is here, he is here because he deserves it. That is the communication management of a man who understands the upcoming match will be read through the lens of who is missing, not through the shape on the whiteboard.

Between announcing and preparing there is still a gap. Missing players is a squad-list matter. How you play when players are missing is a football matter.

Context: a generation built on expensive names

Montella took charge of the Turkey national team in September 2026, after a coaching career spent in Serie A and a short spell at club level in Turkey. He inherited what is widely regarded as the country's best generation in more than a decade. Hakan Çalhanoğlu, born 8 February 2026, is the captain and the metronome of Inter Milan's midfield. Kenan Yıldız, born 12 May 2026, plays for Juventus and has been handed the number 10 shirt — one of the heaviest symbols a young player can carry. Orkun Kökçü, born 29 December 2026, moved from Feyenoord to Benfica in the summer of 2026 for a reported fee in the region of 25 million euros plus add-ons, and quickly became the Portuguese side's creative hinge. Mert Müldür, born 3 April 2026, is Fenerbahçe's right-back.

Those four names are not scattered through the squad. They form a spine: a rhythm-setter at the base, a creator in the middle, a structure-breaker up front, and a source of width on the right flank. When a spine like that is pulled out at once, a national team does not lose four players. It loses a way of playing.

This is happening inside a FIFA international window, when domestic leagues pause and clubs watch every training session of their employees with the anxiety of asset holders. I have long held a view many in the trade consider extreme: fixture density is the single biggest cause of injury, and no medical department can save a player pushed out twice a week for ten months. A minor injury at international level is rarely minor at club level. It is a debt transferred from one party to another.

The spine withdrawn: three different holes

In the last three Turkey matches I watched, the most telling metric was not goals scored. It was how the ball travelled from defence to the attacking third. Most of those balls went through Hakan Çalhanoğlu. He receives from the centre-backs, turns, and chooses the tempo. At Inter that role has been polished into something close to automatic: take the ball in front of the back line, absorb pressure, then play through the lines or switch the point of attack. In the national shirt he is also the set-piece taker — direct and indirect — and the man who decides when the team needs to slow down.

Remove him and Turkey lose three things at once. First, tempo control. Second, set-piece quality, which is the most important weapon for teams that cannot impose themselves territorially. Third, the voice on the pitch. A captain does not merely wear the armband; he adjusts the midfield's positions while the ball is rolling, and that job cannot be handed to a player who has just been called up.

Orkun Kökçü is the second link. Unlike Hakan, Orkun tends to receive between the lines with his back to goal, then turns with his first touch. At Benfica he drives counter-attacks with vertical passes. When Montella says Orkun has a minor injury but has stayed with the squad and is trying to be ready, he is describing a situation every coach fears: a player not fit enough to be at his best but proud enough to want to play anyway.

Here I have to stop for a technical reason. With a player like Orkun, a minor injury affects performance quality in anything but a minor way. People think first of running speed. What disappears earlier is the ability to turn under pressure and to win low duels. A creative midfielder at eighty per cent can still produce the decisive pass, but he will lose duels he normally wins, and that collapses an entire pressing system. If Orkun starts alongside another midfielder, that system has to be redesigned around him rather than simply containing him.

Kenan Yıldız is the third hole, and arguably the hardest to fill. In modern football most mid-tier teams defend in a low block, conceding midfield and protecting the box. To open a block like that you need two tools: set pieces, and a player capable of beating a man in tight space. Kenan is the second tool. He receives on the left, drags a defender into a one-on-one, and forces the whole back line to shift. Without him a team does not simply lose a forward; it loses the ability to break a defensive structure. The usual result is a sharp rise in crosses and a fall in chance quality.

Mert Müldür is mentioned less often but matters just as much. A solid right-back liberates the winger ahead of him. Without him, Montella must either pull a centre-back wide or use a player unfamiliar with the position, and the safest option then is to reduce the attacking role of the right flank. One flank locked down means the opponent only has to defend half the width of the pitch.

The broader tactical consequence is fairly clear, and I say this with caution: when a team loses both its rhythm-setter and its creator, it usually shifts to a double pivot, plays fewer but longer passes, and turns the game into a midfield scrap. That can work in a specific match, but it loads the burden onto the midfield's legs — and legs are precisely what runs dry at this stage of a season.

Pressure and expectation: the absent leader

There is a dimension the data tables cannot measure. In 2026, in a press room in Russia, I asked Didier Deschamps whether he feared the expectation of an entire nation resting on Kylian Mbappé, then nineteen years old. A male colleague nearby laughed. I answered that emotion is what determines performance. They laughed at me for asking Mbappé about feelings; then the whole of France wept with joy.

That story matters directly for Turkey now, because Hakan Çalhanoğlu's absence is not only a technical matter. He is the senior voice in the dressing room, the man who talks to referees, the one who keeps the team calm when it falls behind. Without him, a twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old will have to do that job. Not everyone sleeps the night before the first match they have to carry a team through.

I learned this the hard way in 2026, when stadiums stood empty and I lost my television commentary contract. Instead of waiting, I launched a livestream series telling the stories of the people who work in football's shadows — assistant coaches, stadium cleaners, unemployed former players. An episode about João, a man who spent twenty years cleaning the Maracanã and lost his job overnight during lockdown, drew more than two million views and raised over 340,000 reais for an emergency fund. In 2026, I learned to listen to football with my heart when the stadiums had no voices left in them.

For Turkey, that lesson means this: with four pillars missing, the match stops being a pure tactical test. It becomes a test of who dares take responsibility. And this is where Montella is paid to be a coach rather than a list manager.

Where I could be wrong

I have to be honest about my limits. First, I am building an argument on names, and football history is full of teams that played better once their stars were absent. When there is no one to dump the ball to, a team is forced to run more and pass faster, and sometimes becomes harder to read. A Turkey without Hakan might play more directly and trouble an opponent who prepared to face a possession side.

Second, Montella's public listing of absences can be read two ways. It is admirable transparency, or it is the preparation of an excuse. I lean towards the first reading, but I know the second has merit. A coach who plants the idea in the dressing room that the squad is short can accidentally produce a team playing in the mindset of waiting to lose.

Third, and this is what bothers me most: Montella publicly thanking Orkun for staying with a minor injury is a fine human gesture and a dangerous professional message. A woman says one small thing; people laugh. Five years later, they repeat it. I have said many times that fixture density is the root cause of injury. Praising a player for trying to play while not fully healed contradicts that very principle. The young players in that dressing room are hearing a signal: if it hurts, still play.

Testable conclusions

Three predictions, and I accept being wrong if they do not come true.

One: if Orkun Kökçü starts, he will be substituted before the seventieth minute, unless the scoreline forces Montella to keep him.

Two: Turkey's cross volume will rise above their recent average, while their high-quality chances will fall.

Three: Montella will begin with a double pivot, or one holding midfielder plus two defensively inclined shuttlers, to compensate for the missing rhythm-setter.

And one question to leave with anyone watching this match: if Turkey win without Hakan, Kenan and Mert, will we talk about squad depth — or will we start asking why this team depended on four names in the first place?