What can I say? What an unbelievable match that was!
The first half, largely dominated by the Czech Republic, was nothing much to write home about. But the second half… The second half! I’m speechless!
Let’s start at the beginning. The opening 45 minutes saw the Czechs take the initiative and take the lead, thanks to a towering header from Jan Koller on 34 minutes.
It was straight out of the Czech Republic goalscoring textbook. Get the ball out wide to the overlapping fullback, get the cross in and get the header on target. It worked a treat. Zdenek Grygera’s cross was met with a superb header by Koller, whose header found the top corner, despite the best efforts of Turkey goalkeeper Volkan Demirel.
The rest of the first half passed without major incident, but the second half more than made up for that.
First, the Czechs doubled their lead in controversial fashion on 66 minutes. Turkey lost their centre half Emre Gungor to a nasty looking injury, but didn’t get a subsitute on straight away and the Czechs took full advantage. A break down the right hand side saw Libor Sionko cross to the far post for Jaroslav Plasil to steal into the gap usually occupied by Gungor and poke the ball home.
Turkey had offered precious little going forward to that point and looked dead and buried, but Fatih Terim’s men rallied and grabbed a foothold on the game with ten minutes remaining. Hamit Altintop laid the ball back for Arda Turan to strike past Petr Cech and give the Turks hope.
It was as if someone had flicked a switch. Turkey flew at the now panic-stricken Czechs, and nobody, it seemed was more panicked than the usually unflappable Cech. The Czech goalkeeper produced an uncharacteristic howler to send the stadium into uproar. He rose to claim a routine cross and, inexplicably, dropped it straight at the feet of Nihat. The Turkish captain tapped the loose ball into the empty net and the crowd went berserk. Time remaining: three minutes.
With the score now back to 2-2, the match looked to be headed for a history-making penalty shoot-out, but the Turks had other ideas, and just two minutes later, Nihat stunned the Czechs with one of the best goals of the tournament so far. The Villarreal striker timed his run perfectly to beat the Czech offside trap, opened himself up and curled a fantastic shot off the underside of the crossbar to sink the Czechs and send Turkey through to the quarter-finals and a clash with Croatia.
There was still time for goalkeeper Volkan to receive his marching orders after shoving over Koller, leaving pint-sized striker Tuncay to take over in goal, but the Czechs were simply too shell-shocked to recover.