Turkey beat Finland 2-0 in final warm-up game
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Turkey put in its most impressive performance of their warm-up matches for Euro 2008 in the Turkish team's final friendly game on Thursday as they eased to a 2-0 win over Finland.
In the game played in Duisburg, Germany, goals by Middlesbrough's Tuncay Sanli and Semih Senturk, leading scorer in the Turkish championship last season, gave Turkey a deserved win and will have done them no harm ahead of their opening Euro 2008 Group A match against 2004 finalists Portugal on June 7.
While Tuncay and Semih got the goals it was the young Turk Mevlut Erdinc that caused interminable problems for the Finnish defense, as the striker, who plays for French First Division side Sochaux, twisted and turned them everywhere.
Equally encouraging for fiery coach Fatih Terim was that his defense re-enforced by Servet Cetin and Mehmet Aurelio showed much more resolve than in their previous two matches which saw them beat Slovakia 1-0 and then lose 3-2 to Uruguay.
Tuncay opened the scoring in the 15th minute, after good work by Sabri Sarioglu and Semih added a second two minutes from time after seizing on a ball from Kazim.
The team lineups:
Turkey: Vokan Demirel, Sabri Sarioglu, Servet Cetin, Gokhan Zan, Hakan Balta, Emre Belozoglu (Gokdeniz Karadeniz, 90), Mehmet Aurelio (Mehmet Topa, 87), Hamit Altintop (Ayhan Akman, 78), Mevlut Erdinc (Colin Kazim-Richards, 74), Nihat Kahveci (Semih Senturk, 83), Tuncay Sanli (Arda Turan, 67).
Finland: Peter Enckelman (Otto Fredrikson, 46), Ari Nyman, Toni Kallio (Niklas Moisander, 81), Juha Pasoja (Veli Lampi, 53), Tony Kuivasto, Mika Vayrynen, Roman Eremenko, Markus Heikkinen (Jonatan Johansson, 61), Joonas Kolkka, Alexei Eremenko (Jari Litmanen, 61), Mikael Forssell (Berat Sadik, 78).