Türkiye

The first-choice goalkeeper of the projected eleven, the man who started the play-off final in Pristina and kept the sheet clean through the finals phase that carried Türkiye back to a World Cup. His selling point is the one a Montella side most needs: a low, reactive shot-stopper at his sharpest when his defence sits deep and the chances arrive late and sudden, which is precisely the game Türkiye will be asked to play against Paraguay and the United States. The contest for the gloves is real rather than ceremonial, the vastly experienced Mert Günok still highly trusted behind him, but for now the shirt is his on reflexes and on the institutional credit of having been there when it mattered most. A goalkeeper in the settled middle of his career, anchoring a back line strong in the duel but short of recovery pace, asked to be the safety net when the high left flank is turned. This is his first World Cup, and the chance to be the last line of a generation that finally got the country back to the stage it spent twenty-four years watching from outside.

The veteran goalkeeper and the experienced head behind Çakır, a thirty-seven-year-old at, in all likelihood, his final tournament, valued as much for the calm he brings to the room as for what he would give between the posts. With thirty-seven caps across a long career largely spent in the Süper Lig, he is the kind of trusted deputy a manager keeps close precisely because the drop-off, should it come, is to a known and unflustered quantity rather than a novice. His World Cup will most probably be played from the bench, the senior keeper whose presence steadies a young squad and whose own long wait for this stage closes here, late, in the colours he has served for years.

The third goalkeeper, a Manchester United squad keeper whose club season has been spent largely in the shadows of a crowded keeping situation in England, here as depth rather than as a contender for minutes. His standing is that of a capable professional who has had to settle for the role of understudy at club level too, and who arrives as the third option in a settled order behind Çakır and Günok. His tournament will almost certainly be played in training and on the bench, the cover whose job is readiness; that he holds a place at one of Europe's biggest clubs, even on its periphery, speaks to a career of real pedigree even as game time has been scarce.

The right-back of the projected eleven and the deliberate counterweight to the side's adventurous left, the full-back who holds his position and balances the back four while Ferdi Kadıoğlu flies up the opposite flank. At twenty-nine he is in the seasoned heart of his career, a Roma full-back of sixty caps and three international goals whose game is built on positional discipline rather than overlap, exactly the steadying profile Montella wants on the conservative side of an asymmetric defence. His season in Serie A has kept him sharp in the demanding, structured football of the Italian game, and his job for the national team is less to create than to make sure the runway behind Türkiye's left does not have a twin on the right. A first-choice starter in his peak years, dependable rather than spectacular, the kind of full-back a manager picks when he has already decided to take his risks elsewhere.

A centre-back of the projected eleven and the wall Montella leans on whenever the ball is in the air, the front-foot, aerially dominant defender tasked with subduing Australia's height in the opener and turning every Çalhanoğlu set-piece into a threat at the other end. At twenty-eight he is in his prime and a senior voice in the back line, sixty-one caps and six international goals to his name, a commanding presence at 190cm whose leadership and dead-ball menace make him doubly valuable to a side that will live on tight, low-scoring group games. His club football is now played in Saudi Arabia with Al Ahli, a move down from the European elite where he made his name but one that has done nothing to dull his standing for the national team. The caveat is the one that has followed him for years: his appetite for the duel can pull him out of position, and against quick runners breaking in transition he is no longer the recovery defender he once was, which is precisely the version of the game Türkiye most want to avoid. A leader in his peak, asked to win the first contest of the tournament in the air and to keep his head when the game opens up.

The left-sided centre-back of the projected eleven, the play-off pairing's left-footer whose balance is the quiet reason the defensive structure works, stepping out from the back to play the line-breaking pass that starts the build-up. His left foot is not a detail but the thing that gives the back line its natural shape, letting Çalhanoğlu drop to the right of the centre-backs while Bardakcı progresses the ball on the other side. A Galatasaray defender hardened in the title fights of the Süper Lig, he was part of the spine that delivered the play-off path and has held his place on merit through the build-up, even with the in-form Ozan Kabak pressing hard for the same shirt. A first-choice starter whose value is in his calm on the ball and his reliability beside the more combustible Demiral, the sort of unglamorous defender whose absence would be felt far more than his presence is praised.

The left-back of the projected eleven and the single most adventurous moving part of Montella's defence, the full-back who pushes so high up the touchline that he is, in possession, effectively a winger, the mechanism that lets Kenan Yıldız fold inside and the whole left flank become an attacking lane. It was his goal that edged Romania 1-0 in the play-off semi-final, the strike that started the journey back, and his energy down that side is central to the team's attacking geometry. His move to Brighton placed him in the relentless running game of the Premier League, the ideal finishing school for a full-back asked to cover ground at both ends. The trade-off is the structural risk the team is built to live with: the space he leaves behind is a runway on the counter, the very ground Paraguay's transitions and the United States' runners will chase, and whether İsmail Yüksek can shield it alone is one of the live questions of the group. A starter in his prime years whose attacking value is undisputed and whose recovery pace will be tested to its limit, the boldest single bet in the back line.

One of the carriers of the side's institutional memory, a thirty-year-old centre-back of sixty caps whose spine, alongside Çalhanoğlu's, connects this young team to the harder lessons of recent cycles. A former Leicester defender now back in Türkiye with Fenerbahçe, he has slipped from the certain starter he once was into the senior depth behind the Demiral–Bardakcı pairing, the experienced option Montella can turn to when a game needs a steadier, more conservative head at the back. His standing is that of a respected elder in the unit rather than a guaranteed name on the team sheet, and his tournament is likely to be spent ready rather than starting; but in a back line this short of recent tournament muscle, the value of a defender who has seen the biggest nights is not measured in minutes alone.

The in-form centre-back pressing hardest for a starting place, the play-off pairing's other half whose selection over domestic alternatives reflected Montella's loyalty to the men who delivered the path to North America. At twenty-six he is moving into his peak, twenty-nine caps and two international goals to his name, a Hoffenheim defender whose Bundesliga season has kept him in the rhythm of top-level European football. He is the strong alternative to Bardakcı for the left-sided role and a ready replacement if Demiral's discipline or pace is exposed, which makes him less a fringe pick than a starter-in-waiting whose form has kept the contest genuinely open into the final week. A peak-age defender whose first World Cup may begin on the bench but whose place in the back line is one strong session, or one shaky opening match, from changing.

A versatile full-back capable of covering the right and, at a push, the centre, here as depth behind Zeki Çelik on the conservative flank. At twenty-seven he is in his prime, forty-four caps and three international goals across a steady international career, a Fenerbahçe defender whose season in the Süper Lig title race has kept him battle-ready. His role is rotation rather than the eleven: the full-back Montella turns to when he wants fresh legs late or cover for an injury on the right, valued for his reliability and his familiarity with the group rather than for any one standout quality. A solid squad professional at a first World Cup, the kind of dependable option a balanced tournament squad is built to carry.

The left-back cover behind Ferdi Kadıoğlu, a twenty-five-year-old Galatasaray defender whose twenty-two caps have come as the understudy on a flank that the system asks an enormous amount of. His club season was spent inside a Galatasaray side competing on every front in Turkish football, sharpening him for the demands of the role. His tournament is most likely to be played as depth, the like-for-like option should the first-choice left-back tire or fall, a peak-approaching full-back whose first World Cup is more about being ready than being central. Honest squad depth on the side of the pitch where Türkiye take their biggest risks.

The most senior of the back-line reserves, a thirty-two-year-old centre-back of nineteen caps whose call-up rewards a steady season in the Süper Lig with Çaykur Rizespor. At his age and standing this is emergency cover rather than a contest for minutes, the extra experienced body a tournament squad keeps in reserve against an injury crisis at the back. In all likelihood his first World Cup will be played in training and from the bench, a late-career reward for a dependable domestic professional rather than a stage he is expected to take. Honest depth, picked for reliability and a calm head rather than for any threat to the starters.

The captain and the structural adult in a young team, the deep-lying orchestrator who drops between or just to the right of the centre-backs to take the first pass and set the tempo, and whose dead-ball delivery is the surest route to a goal in a tight group game. Türkiye's most-capped active player with 104 caps and 22 goals, he has spent the last several seasons as the regista at the base of an Inter side that reached the heights of the modern Champions League, a footballer who reinvented himself from a free-kick specialist into one of the most intelligent controllers of tempo in Europe. If the teenagers are the highlight reel, Çalhanoğlu is the framework that keeps the side from dissolving into the chaos Turkish national teams have so often courted: his first pass dictates the rhythm, his set-pieces give aerial threats like Demiral and Bardakcı a target to attack, and his presence is the reason the kids can receive the ball in dangerous areas rather than fetching it from their own half. The trade-off is mobility, the one weakness the system must hide: in the deep role he can be hurried by quick pressing midfields, and if he is isolated the whole creative axis starts too far from goal. At thirty-two and at his peak as a thinker if not as an athlete, this is almost certainly his one clear World Cup as the man around whom everything is built, the bridge between the institutional memory of past cycles and the gifted generation he now leads. The single player Türkiye can least afford to have crowded out of the game.

The defensive midfielder of the projected eleven and the engine that makes the structure stand up, the screener who shuttles and covers so that Çalhanoğlu is free to dictate from deep. At twenty-seven he is in his prime, thirty-one caps to his name, a Fenerbahçe ball-winner whose season in a club side fighting on every front has honed exactly the lateral, ground-covering game the national team needs from him. His is among the most demanding briefs in the side: with Ferdi pushing high on the left, Yüksek must patrol the space behind, doing the covering work that keeps the asymmetric shape from becoming a liability against quick transitions. It is, by Montella's own admission after the Venezuela friendly, the seam where the team is most exposed, and whether one man can shield it under sustained pressure is one of the genuine open questions of the group. A first-choice starter at his first World Cup whose value is almost entirely in the unseen work, the player who does the running so the gifted ones can play.

The attacking midfielder of the projected eleven, the link between midfield and attack who works between the lines and arrives late in the box to finish moves the young wide players begin. At twenty-five he is moving into his peak, forty-nine caps and four international goals to his name, and it was his goal in the 4-0 win over North Macedonia in the build-up, one of two he struck that night, that underlined his knack for late penetration of the area. Now back in the Süper Lig with Beşiktaş after his time in the Eredivisie and Portugal, he was retained in the side after his cameo in the play-off final, one of the men whose contribution to the path earned Montella's loyalty. His job is to connect, to crash the box when the wingers cut inside, and to give the strikerless front line a goal threat from deep that a missing centre-forward cannot. A peak-years starter whose first World Cup gives him the platform to be the side's most reliable midfield scorer, the runner who makes the front six add up.

The rotational defensive midfielder behind İsmail Yüksek, a twenty-eight-year-old Borussia Dortmund anchor whose twenty-nine caps and Champions League-level club football make him a more than capable deputy at the base of midfield. In his prime and seasoned in the demands of the Bundesliga and Europe, he is the like-for-like option should Yüksek tire or pick up a knock, the kind of disciplined, positionally sound screener a manager wants in reserve for a deep role that the whole defensive shape leans on. His tournament is most likely one of rotation and game-management rather than the eleven, but his profile is exactly the safeguard Türkiye need behind a single pivot covering enormous ground. A peak-age professional at his first World Cup, depth with a genuine top-level pedigree.

One of the squad's most experienced heads, a thirty-one-year-old of seventy-three caps and five international goals whose versatility across defensive midfield and centre-back is his calling card. Now with Galatasaray after a long career in Germany and Italy, he is carried for exactly that flexibility, the tournament-squad professional who can fill a hole in two units without fuss and who brings a steadiness the young group lacks. His role is depth and reliability rather than the eleven, and his tournament is likely to be spent ready rather than starting, but a footballer of his caps and his adaptability is the kind of insurance a manager values most precisely when a group tightens and injuries bite. A senior squad man whose worth is measured in what he prevents rather than what he produces.

The jewel of Turkish football and the player most likely to unlock a stubborn low block with a single pass or shot off his left foot, nominally the right-sided forward of the projected eleven but in truth the side's primary creator wherever he chooses to drift, roaming central onto his stronger foot whenever the game lets him. A Real Madrid footballer at twenty-one with six goals in twenty-eight caps, he is already an established name at the club that defines the modern game rather than a hidden gem, which makes this the next chapter of his story rather than the breakout the country first imagined. His season in Madrid has been the demanding apprenticeship of breaking into one of the most loaded squads in Europe, the kind of grounding that tends to sharpen rather than diminish a player of his gifts. For a side ranked where Türkiye are, having a footballer the elite clubs of Europe fought to sign is genuinely rare, and a tournament that turns on single moments rewards exactly the invention he carries: a ball threaded through a packed defence, a dribble that bends a back line out of shape. The questions are physical, that he can still be muscled out by stronger units and that his defensive share is developing, but on his afternoon he is the difference between this side and a merely tidy one. The face of the generation the country has been waiting for, at his first World Cup and at the start of what should be a decade carrying the nation's creative hopes.

Türkiye's clearest vertical threat and the most exciting unknown in the side, the left-sided forward of the projected eleven who folds inside from the touchline into the half-space to isolate his man and drive at the box. He wears Juventus's number ten at twenty, the shirt of a club's heritage handed to a footballer barely out of his teens, a marker of how highly the game already rates a direct, two-footed attacker who can finish and create in equal measure. With Ferdi flying up the touchline outside him, Yıldız drifts inside to attack one-on-one, a movement that is close to impossible to defend cleanly when the timing is right, and he was part of the chain that fed Kerem's play-off winner that sent the country to the World Cup. His season in Turin has been one of growing responsibility at a storied club rebuilding itself, the stage on which he has gone from prospect to fixture. This is the breakout in the truest sense: a player of obvious gifts who has yet to show them on a stage this size, emerging rather than established, the future of the attack being asked to deliver in the present. If the tournament turns him from coming man into known quantity, it will have done its work.

The lightning rod of Montella's whole gamble, the mobile forward who leads a line with no recognised centre-forward in it, stretching the back four with relentless running in behind so that the technical players around him find room to breathe. Not a natural number nine, he leads by movement rather than by occupation, pressing aggressively from the front and dragging defenders out of shape collectively rather than pinning them individually, which is the entire premise of the forvetsiz sistem, the strikerless side Montella has staked his return on. He arrives in red-hot form, the scorer in both June friendlies, against North Macedonia in the 4-0 and the winner-setting strike in the 2-1 over Venezuela, the run of goals that cemented his place at the head of the attack. A Galatasaray forward whose explosiveness and versatility have made him one of the most coveted players in the Süper Lig, he is in the productive heart of his career and at his first World Cup. If the strikerless idea works, it works through his legs; if the Turkish press's standing craving for a true striker is vindicated, it is his profile they will point to, which makes him the single player whose tournament will decide whether Montella's bold tactical bet looks like vision or like stubbornness.

The man who scored Türkiye back to the World Cup, and now the most intriguing alternative in the front line, the more orthodox runner who sits on the shoulder of the whole attack should Montella want directness over the strikerless interchange. It was his strike just after the hour in Pristina that beat Kosovo 1-0 in the play-off final and ended a twenty-four-year wait, a goal that has already entered the country's footballing folklore. At twenty-seven he is in his prime, fifty-one caps and fifteen international goals to his name, the most prolific finisher in the squad, a Fenerbahçe forward whose end product is sharper than that of the men ahead of him in the projected eleven. That he begins on the bench is a measure of Montella's tactical conviction rather than any doubt over his quality: the side that finished the build-up looked strikerless, and Kerem is the card the manager holds for the moment a low block must be broken with a more direct profile. A peak-years forward whose place in the lore is already secure and whose tournament could yet turn on a single substitute's appearance, the most decisive bench option in the group.

An experienced attacking midfielder and one of the squad's more characterful voices, the thirty-year-old of forty-six caps and six international goals who spoke afterwards of the fireworks set off through the night outside the team hotel in Pristina, the kind of hostile welcome that, in this group's telling, only steeled it. Now with Kasımpaşa after his years at Fenerbahçe, his game is built on technique and a long-range strike, and his role here is depth and creative variety from the bench rather than a place in the eleven. At his age and standing this is most likely his first and only World Cup, a deserved stage for a player who has been part of the national-team picture for the best part of a decade. A seasoned squad option, valued for what he can change when a game stalls and for the experience he lends a young dressing room.

A direct, versatile wide forward and one of the form options off the bench, the twenty-five-year-old whose goal in the 2-1 win over Venezuela in the build-up underlined his case for tournament minutes. With eighteen caps and three international goals, he is in the rising stretch of his career, a Galatasaray attacker whose season inside a side competing on every front has kept him sharp. His role is rotation and impact, the change of pace and width Montella can introduce when the wide starters need refreshing or a game needs a different angle of attack. A peak-approaching forward at his first World Cup, depth with genuine end product, the kind of bench option whose form has made him more than a passenger.

One of the young attackers waiting for the tournament that announces them, a twenty-year-old who scored in the 4-0 build-up win over North Macedonia and whose ceiling the federation rates highly. With five caps and one international goal, he is at the very start of his international life, an Eintracht Frankfurt forward whose breakout in the Bundesliga marked him as one of the brightest of the German-developed Turkish talents the diaspora keeps producing. His role here is squad depth and a glimpse of the future, the emerging attacker seeded beneath the established names rather than expected to feature heavily. This first World Cup is an education and a shop window in one, the kind of grounding that tends to matter a cycle or two from now.

The squad's nearest thing to a target man, a twenty-one-year-old of 192cm whose height gives Montella a different card from the bench against a side defending deep, the orthodox aerial presence the strikerless line otherwise lacks. He scored in the 4-0 win over North Macedonia in the build-up, with seven caps and two international goals to his name, a Porto forward whose move to one of Portugal's giants placed him in a serious European development environment. His role is depth and tactical variety, the late option when a packed defence needs a body to aim crosses at, a profile no one else in the front line offers. A first World Cup that is part audition, part contingency, the future striker held in reserve against the very low block the system is built to worry about.

A pacy, direct wide forward and one of the younger fringe picks, a Fenerbahçe attacker whose selection adds another option for the flanks rather than a contender for the eleven. His game is built on speed and running, the kind of profile that can stretch a tiring defence late, and his standing is that of a developing player given a tournament education rather than a settled international. In all likelihood his World Cup will be played from the bench and in training, depth on the wings whose value is in his legs and his ceiling rather than his current claim on minutes. An honest squad pick, here to be ready and to grow.