Mornings in Antalya are hot, but Turkey go out in a particularly cold way. On the hotel balcony the crescent flag hangs as stubbornly as it did yesterday, only looking at it is somehow no fun any more. The phone holds a silent rebuke: 78 per cent possession, 32 shots, zero goals and one Paraguay that clearly hadn't read the xG reports. The screen glows red, people downstairs are gathering for breakfast, and I sit on the balcony realising I've already had enough of this World Cup even though it has barely got going.
I actually live in Kaliningrad. Turkey isn't my "second homeland", more of a second address at times. We spent a couple of years living in Alanya: with a sea view, with visits to the immigration office and with morning traffic jams of school buses. Now it's all far more prosaic: an ordinary holiday, a couple of weeks in a hotel, a child comparing the local pool with last year's. But a supporter's brain works like Google Maps: if you're physically in Turkey here and now, it insistently offers to "pin your location" and set the local national team as the default route.
All the more so because the other routes are closed. Russia's national team isn't at this World Cup, and that's not a question of form or tactics, it's a question of geopolitics. The familiar shirt has vanished from the tournament bracket, and the reflex to "support your own" is left hanging in the air. In situations like that you usually look for something close: a familiar language, familiar people, familiar streets. Turkey turned out to be a convenient compromise. I'm not at home here, but I'm not a "three-day tourist" either. I know what Alanya looks like in November, what a kindergarten sounds like in Turkish and how long you can stand in the queue for a residence permit. That's enough to call this team "mine" for the duration of the tournament, if with a small footnote.
The first match against Australia I watched at night, already in the hotel, when most of the guests had given up and gone to bed. Outside the window a dark pool and neatly stacked sun loungers, inside a phone with the stream from Vancouver. I listen to the Turkish anthem slightly detached: not the way I listen to the Russian one, but I still catch myself getting goosebumps. After all, it's the national team of a country where I once learned my first phrases and tried to understand why the kids at nursery argue about the Fener line-up the way grown-ups in Kaliningrad argue about the Baltika line-up.
An hour and a half later I'm greeted by a 0:2 scoreline. Australia score twice, Turkey not once. On the stats screen it all looks civilised and even promising: 72 per cent possession, 30 shots, 51 touches in the box. By expected goals the Turks have every right to be offended at the universe. By the scoreboard they have no rights at all. Turkey play pretty control, neatly pull the opponent apart, rack up xG, but at the moment of truth turn into a team missing one crude, simple strike of the ball.
The Paraguay match arrives in the morning, as the sun reaches the plastic tables by the pool. I wake up a little before the family, switch on the stream and try to watch quietly so as not to wake the neighbours through the wall. Turkey again do everything the manuals of modern football prescribe: pin the opponent back, play it short, cross from the flanks, shoot. The statistics on the phone gradually turn into a joke: 78 per cent possession, 32 shots, 50 touches in the box, expected goals past two. Paraguay have a pitiful 22 per cent of the ball, seven shots and one on target, the one that will look like nothing special in the match report but will stay in the memory of Turkish fans as the shot that muted the sound.
If you look at this tournament through the eyes of an analyst from Kaliningrad, Turkey can be understood and even pitied. Against Australia they had decent xG, a clear edge in shots and possession. Against Paraguay, total control: 600-odd passes against fewer than two hundred, tidy accuracy percentages, a sea of attacks down the flanks, set pieces, pressure. Any dashboard built on those two matches will conclude: the team is moving in the right direction, only the finishing is lacking. Anyone who set an alarm for those games will put it a little more simply: "we got up for nothing".
At some point the child crawls onto the sofa next to me, still sleepy but already in an Arda Güler shirt bought yesterday at the shopping centre next door. He asks: "Are we for Turkey?" And I catch myself giving a strange answer: "For now, yes." Not because it's forever, but because right now it's convenient: we're in Turkey, Russia have no tournament, and Arda and company at least play football.
Two minutes later Paraguay score, and everything becomes far too familiar. In my childhood I saw plots like this under other flags: lots of talk before the start, respectable numbers in the report, defeats explained with any words except "we were worse". Back then it was the Russian national team, now it's Turkey, whom I support temporarily, by place of deployment. But the inner monologue stays the same. Only instead of "same as always again" you think: "I seem to have seen this somewhere before".
It's important to admit honestly: this isn't "my" team in the full sense. I didn't grow up with its heroes, didn't stand for its anthem as a child, don't know by heart all the transfers and scandals of the last twenty years. I don't have a Turkish passport, I have Turkish memories: queues at the immigration office, noisy markets, barbershop conversations about Arda and Kenan, the morning nursery where the players' surnames are pronounced better than the days of the week. On that basis I took the right to support Turkey on holiday. And it turned out that's enough for the defeat to cut a little deeper than for a random tourist, but still not as painfully as if the team from home had gone out.
The most interesting thing is how the numbers behave in this story. They seem to be on Turkey's side: possession pushing 80 per cent, heaps of shots, good xG, leaders in touches and passes in every line. But in feel those figures work as scenery behind which the old familiar plot hides: a team that does a lot of "right" things but doesn't know what to do when the world stops caring how correctly it played. Somewhere between 72 per cent possession and 0:2 to Australia, between 32 shots and 0:1 to Paraguay, the main thing gets lost: the goal.
When the Paraguay match ends, the hotel wakes up properly. Some are discussing excursions, some arguing about the best beach, some don't even know Turkey have just finished their World Cup. I switch off the stream, put the phone away and catch myself on a simple thought. Turkey really are to be pitied: the team played boldly, kept the ball, believed in itself and still goes home with the dry line "0 wins". But here I remain an outside witness: I'll close the stream, put the phone away and head to the airport, while this country will go on arguing for a long time about Montella, Arda and unconverted xG.
For me this story ends more simply. As long as Russia isn't at World Cups, I'll keep climbing into other people's dramas like this, picking temporary national teams from the neighbourhood and being surprised how easily they get under your skin. But I still want to believe that at some point the choice will become obvious again, not because we're spending a couple of weeks in a hotel on the Turkish coast, but because the familiar "Russia" tag will appear on the tournament bracket. And then all those 78 per cent possession and 32 shots will remain just a pretty note about how one holiday I supported Turkey and realised how much I miss my own team.
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