We were already eating three or four from Italy on a regular basis; today it happened again.

The man in charge, as if inspired by Pierre Loti, now and then delivers a heavy slap to the swagger we associate with Eastern civilisations.

Shall I tell you what happened last night?

Against Italy, Turkey threw in the towel at the very start of the match.

Attack after 3–0, then the empty space

You have conceded three goals before half an hour is up — what do you do at half-time in a match like that? You no longer have the composure to calculate. You go out and attack. You try to find a goal. Because between 3–0 and 3–1 there is not only one goal; there is the chance that the match can become playable again. There is the crowd getting to its feet. There is the opponent saying “Maybe?” for the first time.

Turkey started the second half that way and found the goal. So far, so good. But with your permission, I want to look at what happened after that goal...

While searching for a second, Turkey was caught short again and it became 4–1. That is exactly the problem I have been seeing for a while in Montella’s team. You have no other option anyway. But how you take that risk matters. If when you score, the whole team’s eyes light up, everyone runs forward for a second goal and you leave a huge space behind for the opponent to use, you can play that football for 10 minutes, maybe 15. You cannot play a whole match like that. Least of all against a side like Italy that knows what to do the moment it wins the ball.

That is why I am not taking those few minutes at the start of the second half and saying “Turkey can actually play like this if it wants.” No. Turkey can attack. There are already players in this squad who can attack. The issue is sustaining that attack. The issue is also knowing in advance what happens the moment the opponent wins the ball.

Your attack has to be an organisation that continues even when the ball is with the opponent. Otherwise, five players running forward and, when they lose the ball, telling the three left behind “All right then, you sort it out” is not attacking football.

The angles that hide until the level rises

Montella’s Turkey could hide this more easily against lower-level opponents. In the lower tiers of the Nations League, what the side opposite you would do was more or less clear. When needed you left them the ball; when needed you took control. If they looked for transitions you stood a little more cautiously; if they sat deep you went at them. There was a balance. But as the level rises, football changes too. The team opposite you is not only made of better players than yours; within the same match it becomes a side with more solutions than you. One moment they play transitions, two minutes later they go back to set play. An attack that starts on the wing finishes through the middle. Before you have a countermeasure for one thing, they are doing something else.

I think Montella’s real exam started here. Because he has a game in his head. He no longer hides that either. There are certain players he believes will play that game, certain roles, a certain structure. A player may be in great form at his club, may be on the rise, may have earned a chance in the national team… All those parameters can come second in Montella’s calculation. First comes the system. Then a player who fits that system is sought.

I stop here.

Why is there such a fixed game in your head?

When tools become the goal

Look, of course a coach will have an idea. A training method, attacking sets, defensive principles. It is impossible for those not to exist. But all of them are tools. They are not the goal. If the team in your hands wants something else, you change. If what you did last week does not work this week, you drop it. If you love a player but his attributes cause you problems against the opponent, you do not play him. Coaching is partly that. It is not putting a book on the pitch and telling the players “I wrote this, you read it.”

I do not have to watch the football fantasies you build before you go to sleep played out on the pitch.

Because today we have inflated the coach more than necessary. With Guardiola this went off the rails. Every coach will have “his game.” The club will be built around that game. Players in, players out, wait two years, wait three years. Then one day the system will settle and everyone will be happy. Fine — but not everyone is Manchester City. Not everyone can spend hundreds of millions of euros every summer. A national team least of all. You cannot make transfers there either. Whoever you have is who you have.

The football Guardiola played at Barcelona was the right football for that Barcelona. Because he had Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Messi. Players who had known each other for years and spoke the same football language. When he tried to build the same thing elsewhere, we saw how hard it was at Bayern. At City an extraordinary space was opened for him. The players he wanted arrived, those he did not want left, the squad was rebuilt again and again. If you have that kind of room, of course you can build your own football laboratory. But we cannot make that room the measure of all coaching.

National-team craft: what can I play today?

A national team is something else entirely. You select the player but you do not develop him. You take him from his club, work with him for a few days, put him in a match and then send him back. So the coach’s craft here is not being able to say “This is my game.” It is looking at the material in hand and being able to say “What can I play with these boys today?”

When the opponent changes, your answer will change too. Against France one thing may be needed, against Italy another, against Estonia another. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. On the contrary, for me coaching itself begins there.

Here, though, in recent years a strange untouchable zone called “game culture” has formed. You get a bad result: “We are installing a game.” Three bad matches: “Process.” Five bad matches: “This team needs time.” Mate, football’s time is not infinite either. If you get bad results, you go. Who can guarantee perfect football three years from now in a national team? In those three years players change, form changes, opponents change. What you have built in your head today may already be outdated in three years.

Fatih Terim on the touchline, the same order on the pitch

On the edge of the Italy match there was also Fatih Terim. The first goal goes in, there is a serious positioning problem on the pitch, and from the screen comes an “These things happen, carry on” mood. If a coach says that to his player, I understand. Because he has to keep the player inside the match. But a pundit is doing another job there. I do not expect him to say “These things happen”; I expect him to explain why.

And the truth is this: Fatih Terim is not a man who came from outside this order. When you talk about the last thirty or forty years of Turkish football and take his name out, a large gap remains. So his coming on screen today and commenting on this order as if he were watching from outside reminds me a little of civil servants in the 1990s who went on television and complained about the state. You are inside this story too. You are even one of its important actors. You have to speak without forgetting that. At this age he should not get keen on other things either; even if he gets the masters’ support, he cannot get the real masters’ support.

For Montella I say the same thing from another side. “We came up from League C, now we are getting used to A level” is not enough for me. We are already like the Turkish lira. We have seen the bottom; we have nowhere else to go. Having brought us this far does not mean the same path is right from here on. Sometimes the method that got you somewhere becomes a wall at the next level. The coach’s job is not to look at that wall and say “Let’s do the same thing a bit more”; it is to look for another door.

Talent for the system — or the system for talent

That is what I saw in the Italy match. I do not think Turkey has a player problem. This team has serious talent. But that talent is sometimes forced to serve the game in the coach’s head. I want to see the opposite. Let the coach serve the talent in his hands.

Because the national team is not Montella’s team.

It is Turkey’s team.