How Montella shocked Rangnick for triumphant Turkey at EURO 2024 | OneFootball

Vincenzo Montella has been in charge of the Turkey national team for just nine months and 12 games, but he surprised Ralf Rangnick to reach the European Championship quarter-finals.

The 50-year-old Italian only took the job on September 21, 2023, just three weeks after Luciano Spalletti was appointed the coach of Italy.

This was only his 12th game at the helm of the Turkish national team, having started with a 1-0 qualifying win away to Croatia in October, and there were calls for him to be fired in March after a 6-1 friendly defeat to Rangnick’s Austria.

However, he got sweet revenge with this 2-1 victory thanks to a brace from former Juventus, Atalanta and Sassuolo defender Merih Demiral, plus the astonishing last-gasp save from Mert Gunok on Christoph Baumgartner’s header.

Montella has now overseen five wins, two draws and four defeats for Turkey, but the most important statistic is that they are in the quarter-finals of EURO 2024, where they will face the Netherlands on Saturday in Munich.

Montella stunned Rangnick with changes

The coach completely surprised Rangnick this evening, forced into changes because Inter midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu and defender Samet Akaydin were suspended.

Montella scrapped the 4-2-3-1 formation and moved them to a 3-4-3 with Arda Guler effectively acting like a False 9 flanked by Juventus winger Kenan Yildiz and Baris Alper Yilmaz.

It allowed them to defend with five and then go rapidly on the counter-attack, especially as Kaan Ayhan played as a defender at Sassuolo and a midfielder here.

They also alternated different ways of playing out from the back to evade the trademark Rangnick high press, including some impressive long passes from the goalkeeper.

Notably, both Demiral goals came from in-swinging Arda Guler corners, so Turkey may well have someone ready to challenge Calhanoglu’s dominance of those set play situations.

Turkey have won three of their four games in EURO 2024 so far, beating Georgia 3-1 and the Czech Republic 2-1, losing only 3-0 to Portugal after some truly chaotic defensive errors.