Türkiye are back at the World Cup finals for the first time in 24 years, and they open their Group D campaign against Australia on Sunday at BC Place in Vancouver. It is only their third appearance at the finals, and the match carries the sense of a team trying to reclaim a place it has spent a generation away from.
The last time Türkiye played on this stage was 2002, when they reached the semi-finals in Japan and Korea and finished with bronze after Hakan Şükür scored after 11 seconds in the third-place play-off against South Korea. That run remains their only deep World Cup memory, and Vincenzo Montella is now only the second coach after Şenol Günes to lead the side at both the European Championship and the World Cup.
Türkiye earned their way back by finishing second behind Spain in qualifying, then beating Romania and Kosovo 1-0 in the play-offs. Hakan Çalhanoglu and Arda Güler each supplied four assists in the campaign, and eight of Türkiye's 19 qualifying goals came from those set-ups. Kenan Yildiz added three goals of his own, making him one of the key reasons this team looks sharper than the one that missed out in 2022.
His fitness, though, is already shaping the build-up to Vancouver. Yildiz suffered a calf injury in the closing stages of the Serie A season, and Türkiye will have to decide whether to risk a player who was central to their qualifying run. That question matters because Australia will not make life easy: they have reached the round of 16 at the last two World Cups, and they won multiple matches in a single edition for the first time in 2022.
Australia also carry a record that says more about their resilience than their scoring power. They have faced the eventual winners in four of their six previous World Cup appearances, losing to West Germany in 1974, Italy in 2006, France in 2018 and Argentina in 2022. Since the start of the 2006 tournament, they have lost 10 of their 17 World Cup games, and Mathew Ryan has conceded 20 goals at the finals since 2014.
Still, Tony Popovic has given them a more stable route back. After replacing Graham Arnold during a poor start to the third round of AFC qualifying, he guided Australia on an eight-match unbeaten run in Group C to secure automatic qualification for the first time since 2014. They scored 38 goals in the Asian section, but only 16 of those came in the third round, which is why this meeting in Vancouver is being framed as a chance to find more of the edge that carried them here.
For Türkiye, the return alone is the headline. For Australia, it is another test against a team desperate to turn a long absence into something more lasting. The opening match of Group D will tell which side settles faster, and whether Yildiz is available to give Türkiye the cutting edge they may need immediately.
