Turkey qualified for the World Cup after 24 years, Austria is in too, and somewhere inside me, a 10-year-old is losing his mind.
France 98. The Blur song. A plastic World Cup ball in a Viennese living room. I was ten years old and the world felt enormous.
Four days before the 2026 World Cup kicks off, that feeling is back. Uninvited, completely welcome.
The first one you remember stays with you forever
France 1998 was my first World Cup with real memory attached to it. The tournament was held in France, and France won it on home soil, with a squad that read like a fantasy team: Zidane, Henry, Trezeguet, Desailly. Brazil were the other force in the room, with Ronaldo, the real one, the phenomenon, still very much at the centre of everything.
Austria was there. And for a 10-year-old living in Vienna, that mattered enormously. Toni Polster was still playing. I admired him then for his positional dominance as a striker, the way he occupied space, the timing. I admire him now equally for being one of the funniest, most honest voices in Austrian football commentary. The fact that his old shirts are fetching upwards of 300 euros at auction tells me I am not alone in this.
That tournament also landed alongside the PlayStation era and the EA Sports World Cup special edition game. Football on screen, football in the living room, football everywhere. It was the second ignition point for my love of the game, after falling in love with Beşiktaş as a club. After 98, football stopped being something I watched and became something I felt.
2002 and the Turks who made history
Then 2002 arrived, and my root country Turkey entered the picture.
What Şenol Güneş built with that squad was genuinely remarkable. Turkey finished third. Third. In a World Cup co-hosted by Japan and South Korea, against the full weight of the established football world, they played with a physicality, organisation, and collective belief that I have never seen a Turkish side replicate. Hasan Şaş. Yıldıray Baştürk. Rüştü Reçber in goal, becoming one of the tournament's standout goalkeepers almost by force of personality alone.
That run cemented football as part of my identity. Not just something I followed. Something I belonged to.
24 years. One generation. Two very different eras.
Turkey has not been back since. That gap, 24 years between World Cup appearances, is not a statistic. It is a story about wasted talent, chaotic football governance, and what happens when a country produces gifted players and then fails to build anything sustainable around them.
The cruel irony is visible in the current squad. Most of the players who qualified for 2026 were not developed inside Turkey. Arda Güler came through Real Madrid's system. Kenan Yıldız through Juventus. Orkun Kökcü through the Dutch football pipeline at Feyenoord. Turkey's talent is real, deep, and recurring. The structures that should nurture it domestically have spent decades doing the opposite.
Arda is one of the rare exceptions, someone who built his foundation at home before going abroad. The way he moves on the ball, the composure, the creative vision at his age, it genuinely makes you wonder what a properly run football ecosystem in Turkey could produce at scale.
Under Vincenzo Montella, there is at least tactical discipline now. Shape, organisation, a clear idea of how to deploy the quality available. If the group stages go well and the bracket opens up, I think a 2002-style run is not fantasy. It is a real possibility. And that possibility is what has me setting alarms for midnight kick-offs.
Two flags. Twice the chaos.
Austria qualified too.
For the first time in a long time, I have two teams to watch, genuinely and without conflict. The country I was born in, and the country of my origin. Two separate sets of nerves. Two separate reasons to shout at the television. I am not sure my sleep schedule will recover before August.
Football has this one trick no other sport has managed: it makes grown adults feel like children again, and nobody is embarrassed about it.
The world in 2026 is objectively more chaotic than it was in 1998. That is not an observation I am making lightly. But the World Cup has always functioned as a temporary agreement between nations to care about something beautiful and exhausting together. I'll take that agreement wherever I can find it.
This one feels personal in a way I did not expect. The inner child who watched Polster and Ronaldo and Zidane in a living room in Vienna is genuinely, unreservedly excited. That kid deserves this.
What I'd actually do
- Watch Turkey's group stage games with the same focus I give Beşiktaş matches. Montella's tactical shape is worth studying, not just enjoying.
- Pay close attention to Arda Güler in the first two games. His form and confidence in those matches will tell you everything about how far Turkey can go.
- Find the old 2002 Turkey highlights. The Senegal match, the Brazil match, the South Korea semi-final heartbreak. Context makes the new chapter better.
- Give Austria a genuine chance rather than watching with lowered expectations. Underdog energy at tournaments is real, and they earned their place.
Sleepless nights ahead. Never happier about it.