Preview Turkey vs Georgia 18.06.2024

One of the most interesting duels from Euro 2024, will be played today from 17:00, in group F, where Turkey will play against Georgia. The two national teams have met only five times so far, three friendly matches and two in the World Cup 2006 preliminaries. The statistics are favorable for Turkey, which has three wins, one draw and one defeat. The most recent direct duel took place 12 years ago, when in a friendly match Turkey managed a 3-1 away victory, among the scorers at that time being Hamit Altintop or Nuri Sahin, the next season's coach of Borussia Dortmund.

Turkey will tick off the third European tournament in a row and the 6th in history, after being eliminated from the groups three times in the previous five tournaments, being eliminated in the semi-finals and quarter-finals on two other occasions. Certainly the best result was obtained at EURO 2008 when, although it led 1-0 and came back to 2-2, it had to admit that it was ultimately defeated by Germany 3-2. Turkey won group D in the preliminaries, in front of Croatia, Wales, Armenia or Latvia. At the moment, however, Turkey's results are not the best, having a consecutive streak of five games without a win, taking into account the four friendly matches played before the final tournament. It is curious that in the least friendly match, Turkey finished tied with Italy, score 0-0, but was defeated by Hungary, Austria or Poland with 2-1 in the most recent match and the last friendly.

Turkey possible line-up: Günok; Ayhan, Demiral, Bardakcı, Kadıoğlu; Özcan, Çalhanoğlu; Güler, Yıldız, Aktürkoğlu; Yılmaz

Georgia waited almost 30 years for a historic qualification for the European Championship, achieving this performance 28 years after the separation of the Soviet Union, where it was a part until 1992. Georgia did not obtain direct qualification for Euro 2024 and this because in the preliminaries finished only in 4th place in group A, after Spain, Scotland and Norway, but Georgia's chance was the good course in the UEFA Nations League, and in the two play-off matches, Georgia defeated Luxembourg 2-0 and then in the final of eliminated Greece after the shots from 11, at the end of the 120 minutes, the score being equal 0-0. Georgia played only one friendly match before Euro 2024, managing to beat Montenegro 3-1.

Georgia possible line-up: Mamardashvili; Kverkvelia, Kashia, Dvali; Kakabadze, Kvekveskiri, Kochorashvili, Shengelia, Chakvetadze; Kvaratskhelia, Mikautadze

Photo credit: Uefa.com

Prediction: Turkey WIN @ 1.75