Türkiye's Run to the Euro 2024 Quarter-finals

The Run That Belonged to a Generation

At Euro 2024 in Germany, Türkiye reached the quarter-finals of a European Championship for the first time since 2008. The squad that Vincenzo Montella inherited only a year before the tournament played four matches that announced not a surprise, but a real team.

The Group Stage: Open With a Win, Survive the Middle, Close With Control

Türkiye's group looked middle-tier on paper. Georgia was newly qualified for major tournaments, Portugal carried Cristiano Ronaldo and a deep golden-generation roster, and Czech Republic played its usual disciplined block.

The opener against Georgia ended 3-1. Mert Müldür, Arda Güler and Kerem Aktürkoğlu scored what remains the top-three list of Türkiye's Euro 2024 strike sequence.

Then came Portugal, a 0-3 that was less a battering and more a reminder of the European Championship's brutal middle. Türkiye's defenders — particularly Merih Demiral and Samet Akaydın — were criticized as much as they were respected for what they had to handle.

The third group match against Czech Republic, a 2-1 win. Cengiz Ünder's 51st-minute opener and Kerem Aktürkoğlu's finish punched the ticket to the round of sixteen.

Round of 16: Beating Austria 2-1

The second round, played in Leipzig, was the Merih Demiral show. Sixty-two seconds into the match, Demiral rose at a corner to head Türkiye in front — the fastest goal in the knockout stage of Euro history at the time.

In the 76th minute, Demiral added a second header. The final 2-1 sent Türkiye through to the quarter-finals against the Netherlands.

The Demiral celebration afterwards — a controversial Grey Wolves salute — drew a two-match UEFA suspension. Demiral missed the quarter-final and any potential semi-final, weakening Türkiye at the critical moment.

Quarter-final: 1-2 to the Netherlands

The evening of 6 July at the Berlin Olympiastadion brought Türkiye and the Netherlands together. In the 35th minute, Samet Akaydın rose at a free-kick and headed Türkiye 1-0 ahead. For Akaydın — born in Berlin, trained in Dortmund's youth system — the moment of scoring against the country of his birth on the country's biggest pitch was a script no novelist would risk.

The Netherlands equalised in the 53rd minute through Stefan de Vrij. In the 76th, Mert Müldür's own goal closed the match at 1-2.

According to Goalence's strict on-pitch dataset, Kaan Ayhan held the highest on-pitch win rate of any Türkiye player across the four matches at 48.1%. Ferdi Kadıoğlu and Barış Alper Yılmaz tied at 41.1%, marking the spine of the Türkiye midfield-and-defence that Montella inherited.

Legacy and Expectation

Reaching the quarter-finals was Türkiye's biggest tournament achievement in sixteen years. Not since the Fatih Terim 2008 squad lost 2-3 to Germany in the semi-final had a Türkiye national side gone this far.

Today, Montella prepares the same spine for the 2026 World Cup. Çalhanoğlu, Kadıoğlu, Demiral, Akaydın, Yıldız, Güler — the majority remain under twenty-five. Euro 2024 was not the end of something. It was the beginning of a generation finding its footing.