Montella names 29-man Turkey preliminary squad with four first-time call-ups before France, Italy and Belgium

At the Turkish Football Federation, I always imagine a very small moment nobody photographs: someone typing a player's name onto a list, and for four of those names the fingers type as if for the first time. Adil Demirbağ. Bartuğ Elmaz. Melih Kabasakal. İlhan Fakılı. Four names inside a 29-man preliminary Turkey squad, named ahead of UEFA Nations League A matches against France, Italy and Belgium.

There is no applause, no floodlight. A preliminary list is a sheet of paper sent out, and most readers skim it in seven seconds. For those four it is different. It is the first time their names sit beside men they watched on television as schoolchildren. The first time a phone buzzes for a reason that is not their club. And quite possibly the first time they walk into a match against France, Italy or Belgium — three names that grant nobody time to settle.

I once queued for tickets in a city that was not my own, so I know that feeling: you are called into a room, and inside the room everyone has known each other for years. A call-up list is a small migration. It is quieter than a transfer, no money sits in the middle, but it carries the same old question: what part of himself will this man leave behind at home?

Three opponents, one unsettled list

Vincenzo Montella took charge of the Turkish national team in September 2026 — the source document calls him Technical Director, and at international level the two titles tend to collapse into one person. He led Turkey to the Euro 2026 quarter-finals, where they lost 1-2 to the Netherlands in Berlin on 6 July 2026. They were then promoted to League A through the March 2026 promotion play-off against Hungary.

Promotion to League A means the waiting room is gone. The Nations League A is the top tier of European national-team football, and every camp carries an uncomfortable question: where does this side actually stand? For Turkey, the answer will be written across three matches against France, Italy and Belgium.

The list Montella published is preliminary: 29 names, not a final squad. That is the point to read slowly. A preliminary list is not a decision; it is a buffer — room to watch, to calculate, to cut. It will be trimmed before the ball rolls. The four first-time call-ups may stay, or they may not.

One thing must be said about the quality of the information. The original announcement available to me provides only a handful of facts — 29 players, four first-time call-ups, Montella as the selector, and three opponents in the top tier. There is no formation, no pressing scheme, no build-up pattern, no performance metric. Most of those fact fields are left empty at the source. Anyone telling you they know how Montella will set up against France, Italy and Belgium is describing their own imagination, not the list.

Based on my experience following this national team across several camps, one lesson repeats itself: the order of publication says nothing about the order on the pitch.

The only thing this list really says

If one technical signal has to be extracted, it is the broadening of the squad base. Montella has called 29 players, four of them uncapped, before the strongest opponents Turkey can face at this level. That is a signal of depth-testing, not of a new tactical system.

Why does depth matter so much now? Because of the five-substitution rule. A deep squad does not make you better for 70 minutes; it keeps you from collapsing in the last 20. When both teams hold five changes, the final twenty minutes become a war of attrition — whoever still has bodies to throw on holds the rhythm. And across three consecutive matches against France, Italy and Belgium, what beats you is rarely a moment of brilliance; it is the 78th minute with legs that no longer answer.

A 29-man list therefore says: I want options. It does not say: I have an idea. Wanting options is necessary, not sufficient.

The four new faces must be read inside that limit. We do not know their positions, their club form, or their intended roles. It may be a reward for a strong club season. It may equally be a consequence of injuries, withdrawals, or load management among regulars. Both scenarios produce the same sheet of paper, and the sheet does not declare which one it belongs to. That is the boundary of this kind of story, and an honest writer states the boundary instead of filling it with guesswork.

One thing I have observed after years standing at the edge of open training sessions: the moment a new player walks into a national-team dressing room is not loud like it is on television. It is silent. He looks for a seat, for a familiar face, for a name to call. In football, integration is measured not in minutes played but in how many times you dare to speak.

There is another layer on the market side. One national-team call-up changes a young player's negotiating position, sometimes within a week. The agent gains a line for the file. The parent club gains a reason to raise a valuation, or to delay a renewal. None of that appears in the announcement, and no valuation or contract clause is stated in the source. But these are the familiar consequences of a call-up, and anyone tracking the transfer window should know that an international ticket can sometimes cost more than a goal.

The contrarian angle: four names are not courage

The first reaction to four unfamiliar faces is praise. Praise for Montella's bravery, praise for a federation embracing renewal, praise for a rising generation. I understand the reflex, but I think it misreads what a preliminary list is.

Calling a player into a preliminary squad for the first time is the lowest-risk act among everything that can be called renewal. You write his name on a sheet, you collect an image of openness, and you have not given him a single minute. Real courage lives elsewhere: naming him in the final squad and sending him on in the 70th minute at 0-0 against France. Very few do that. Most preliminary lists with four new names end with two cuts and two men on the bench.

I am not saying this to criticise Montella. I am saying it to restore the weight of the word opportunity. A preliminary list is an unsigned promise. And an unsigned promise feeds nobody.

The second blind spot is collective memory. We remember national teams through events, not through lists. If one of those four comes on and scores, this story will be retold hundreds of times, wrapped in a legend about Montella seeing what nobody else saw. If all four sit out, this list vanishes from memory within a fortnight and nobody mentions it again. The same document, two entirely different fates, decided by a moment nobody controls. That is why I try to write about such lists while they are still blank paper — before collective memory paints over them.

The third blind spot concerns pressure. When you call a player for the first time and place him in the same week as France, Italy and Belgium, you are asking him to prove himself at the hardest possible level. I dislike that phrasing. Demanding that a man just back from injury, or just entering this level, prove himself in 20 minutes against a world-class defence is a way of adding pressure to the very person you claim to be handing an opportunity. In sports medicine, re-injury risk rises with the feeling that one must prove something. A player afraid of losing his place runs faster than his body permits.

So what would real courage look like? Perhaps telling those four men: this week you are here to learn, not to rescue anyone. A national team can hand someone a debut without turning it into an examination.

The gap in the middle of the list

There is a part of the story the list does not print: the names that are absent.

We do not know who was left out. We do not know who declined through injury, who was held back by a club, who has been pushed out of the plan. But in football, absence is always a character. It sits in the press-conference questions, in the comments under the federation's post, in the eyes of a man watching from home. If Turkey lose to France, the first question will not be how the four newcomers played, but why someone else was not there. A preliminary list is only ever read together with its shadow.

For Turkey there is one more layer. This is a football nation with a large diaspora across Europe, where many young players grow up in foreign academies and must choose a national team. Every time a new face is called, the federation is also answering a question of identity: who counts as Turkish on a pitch? Nothing in the announcement addresses this, and I will not attach it to four specific names. But when I read a national-team list, I remind myself that behind every line there is a file, a family, a choice weighed for a long time.

No crowd inside a list

One thing worth saying about this kind of news: it exists without anyone watching.

A preliminary squad has no stands. No songs, no minute of silence, no shot worth remembering. It is an administrative document shaped like a football story. And in documents like that, the only thing a writer can do is sit still and read to the end.

I learned this during the period when stadiums closed. I once ran a series about matches without spectators, interviewing players who had been forgotten. A former defender was silent for ten minutes and then said: the grass still grows over the mark of my boot. I think about that line whenever I have to write about a list. The grass still grows. Those four still turn up for training. But if nobody sees them in the 70th minute, their story stays on paper.

Without a crowd, every call-up becomes a question with nobody to answer it.

What remains

This information should be read at its true weight: a preliminary announcement, low information value, useful mainly for tracking four new faces and waiting for the final squad. The three matches against France, Italy and Belgium are where the real story starts, and none of them has been played.

The thing to watch is who survives the cut, and who is sent on when the game turns tight. If those four names are still there in the final squad, that is a decision. If one of them enters the 70th minute against France, that is a statement.

What remains is a sheet of paper, four names, and something rather beautiful: in any football nation, someone is typing a player's name onto a list for the first time in his life, and that person has no idea what happens next. I like those moments, because they remind me that football always keeps a part unwritten.

What I want to know lies elsewhere: when the list is cut to 23, how many of those four will still be there — and if none of them is, will we call this an opportunity, or a team photograph nobody remembers?