Suddenly she was there. The fear they have in Portuguese medo and whose “most vulgar form is the fear of making a fool of oneself”, as the poet Fernando Pessoa once wrote.
The 85th minute was on at the Estádio do Dragao, and the danger was palpable that everything possible would have been interpreted as arrogance: the wave, for example, that the spectators had made in the first half. The cheerleaders with their red and green pom-poms, who had come back onto the field at halftime to perform lascivious dances as if there had already been something to celebrate. Or the light show in the stands: the grandstands in the Dragão looked like they were inhabited by fireflies because everyone held up their cell phones and turned on the pocket lamp. Or also: one or the other hoe trick that Ronaldo and company performed for the amusement of the spectators and in the security of victory, which was only an alleged one.
The Portuguese were 2-0 up at half-time, more or less deserved, with goals from Otávio (15′) and Diogo Jota (41′). But then the Turks didn’t just get a goal from Burak Yilmaz (65′). Little by little, the Portuguese were being pushed towards a terrifying abyss without their realizing it. The ball had been bouncing around in the penalty area until Turkey striker Enes Ünal was a toe ahead of Portugal defender José Fonte. In real time there was hardly anything illegal to be seen. But the Turks complained, and the video assistant sent referee Daniel Siebert to make sure that Fonte had hit the Turkish player on the sole: penalty.
“Are you kidding me?” asked Kuntz when he heard the news from Palermo
The spectators in the Dragão, who really lived up to the stadium’s name, Dragons, were silent. bite into their scarves. “Trust your instincts!” Ronaldo shouted at FC Porto goalkeeper Diego Costa.
And Costa jumped.
Maybe that helped, he said later. Maybe it tempted Burak to try to force the ball under the bar. Only: He just shot him over the bar. Not quite as high and far as Uli Hoeneß in the 1976 European Championship final in Belgrade against Czechoslovakia, but almost. Turkey national coach Stefan Kuntz grabbed his head on the sidelines. A few players fell to the ground. Because they all knew the game was over. That it was a shock you don’t recover from. The stadium twisted into a single, cathartic, deafening scream.
Disappointed but proud: the Turkish national coach Stefan Kuntz.
(Photo: Pedro Nunes/Reuters)
The newspaper record screamed on Friday morning: “God exists!”, with a cover photo of Cristiano Ronaldo, of course, although others had acted more conspicuously. and A bola after all, looked up at the sky and on the bench, because the 2016 European champion coach is called Santos, Fernando Santos. “Todos os santos ajudan”, all the saints help.
“It was a difficult moment,” said Santos, 67, when asked about the penalty scene. But Santos also insisted that he “never lost faith” that Portugal would win. He might have been right, the goal to make it 3-1 by substitute Matheus Nunes in injury time and Ronaldo’s subsequent shot into the crossbar didn’t speak against it.
But maybe not Santos would have been right, but Kuntz. The former U21 coach of the German Football Association left Porto believing that the game would have been over if Burak, 36 (who retired immediately after the game) had converted the penalty and forced extra time. The other feeling Kuntz felt after the game in Portugal was disbelief at the news of Palermo, North Macedonia’s 1-0 win in Italy.
In the second half the Turkish performance got better and they had chances
“I thought: are you kidding me?” Kuntz said SZ about the moment when the adjutants had given him the result after the game was over. Now he meets Italy on Tuesday in the two-million city of Konya in a game for the golden pineapple. “That’s good too, because you can learn from a game like this,” said Kuntz and left the Dragão.
One of the convictions that Kuntz, who has been in office since September, was convinced that his team still had a lot to learn in order to realize their full potential. The pride in his team (“no one needs to be ashamed of”) outweighed his anger at the alpha and omega of the game. Or more precisely: the quarrels about the penalty at the end and the anger about the first 20 minutes of the game in which his team had slept.
“We only woke up after it was 0-1,” said Kuntz. At half-time, as could be concluded from his statements, he had become clear. He asked the crew in the dressing room whether they were convinced of the tactics or whether they would rather return to the previous model; But not that, the unanimous answer was: “Then show it! Then play like this!!!”, was the call with which he sent his team back onto the field.
In the second half, the Turkish performance actually got better. You had chances. They could have turned the game around. But that was enough in the end to scare the Portuguese. much fear Panic to be exact. But that was not enough on Thursday, it should be a lesson for the Portuguese with a view to Tuesday against North Macedonia. It’s all at stake again in Porto, this time in the form of a World Cup ticket. “I’ve won finals that I’ve said I’ve lost before and I’ve lost at least one final that I’ve won…” said Portugal coach Santos after leading his team through hell of fear.