It’s time to face facts. Never again should any of us tip Turkey as dark horses for the World Cup. They made the semi-finals in 2002, sure, but that’s a bit like saying the Miami Dolphins were big in 1973. Every dog has its day.Turkey went out of the 2026 World Cup on day nine last night, the biggest waste of an airfare ever. I don’t know why we’re seduced by Turkey’s prospects. Most of the time, they don’t get as far as qualifying for the finals. This was only their third appearance but they have Arda Guler, Kenan Yildiz, Hakan Calhanoglu and others with passable talent, so there’s no excuse for being so bad.I’ve been trying to think of the best way to sum up Turkey’s elimination, and it’s probably this: they hung on in the tournament for precisely two and a half hours longer than Haiti. Haiti’s football culture is only just sprouting. They were breaking ground. Turkey’s campaign should be buried under it. ‘Here lies the dignity of all those idiots (present company included) who thought the boys from the Bosphorus might be in with a shout’.There’s another way of framing Turkey’s miserable under-performance: 62 shots across their games against Australia and Paraguay without scoring. Since the statisticians began keeping track in 1966, there is no record of a team failing to hit the net with so many attempts across a two-match span.Vincenzo Montella is by no means a bad coach. He was a handy player too, winning Serie A with Roma (albeit around the time Turkey were making the World Cup’s last four in 2002) and he was with Italy in the final of the European Championship in 2000, a night when they were absolutely robbed by France.