Mbappé sinks Turkey as France opens Nations League campaign with a win

One strike was all it took. In the 53rd minute, Kylian Mbappé took a pass from Michael Olise and finished with his right foot, low and inside the left post, for the 0-1 that sent France home from Kocaeli with all three points. Turkey pushed hard and created chances, but came away empty handed in its Group A1 opener in the UEFA Nations League.

The match opened with Turkey on the front foot, looking to spring a surprise behind the engine of Arda Güler. Before halftime the hosts had already given two warnings, through Baris Alper Yilmaz and a header from Ferdi Kadioglu, neither finding the net. France, with more of the ball, had its moments too: Mbappé went close in the 16th minute, and Michael Olise tried his luck from an almost impossible angle in the 42nd, forcing a spectacular save. The first half ended 0-0, with Turkey arguably the sharper side in the closing stretch.

The second half opened with another Turkish warning: Arda Güler and Ismail Yüksek both fired efforts that missed the target, and a header from Abdülkerim Bardakci off a corner flew narrowly wide. But just as Turkey was applying the most pressure, France struck. In the 53rd minute, Mbappé finished off Olise's pass for what proved to be the only goal of the match.

The play came with an unexpected cost: Mbappé felt discomfort, play was stopped twice for medical attention, and he was eventually substituted for Désiré Doué in the 58th minute. France kept pushing through Doué, Jules Koundé, who rattled the post with a shot in the 68th minute, and Ousmane Dembélé, but could not add to the lead. Turkey, for its part, responded through Zeki Çelik and a Bardakci effort that grazed the crossbar in the 75th minute, but the equalizer never came.

The closing stretch had its own dramatic twist: in the 84th minute, a handball by Ugurcan Çakir led to a red card, which was overturned by VAR a minute later, only for the goalkeeper to be sent off anyway in the 86th minute after a second review. Turkey finished the match with ten men, and eight minutes of stoppage time were not enough to turn the result around.

What the numbers say

France dominated possession and completed nearly twice as many passes as Turkey, but the shot count was even. Efficiency, and Mbappé's goal, made the difference.

The xG generated in the match, calculated after the fact from shot locations, came out almost even: 1.175 for Turkey versus 1.224 for France, a number that reflects how tight the game was despite the scoreline showing just one goal.

The preview had been considerably more favorable to the French: our projection gave France a 57% chance of winning, versus 23% for Turkey and 20% for a draw, with combined expected goals of 4.06 (1.57 for Turkey and 2.49 for France). The final result, a tight 1-0, fell well short of that forecast of an open, higher scoring match, though the favorite did walk away with the three points.

What it means for the group

With this result, France moved to 3 points in Group A1, level at the top with Belgium, while Turkey was left without points after this opening matchday. The gap between the two sides in the standings stood at 3 points. It is still only the start of the group stage, but France already looks solid despite the trouble Turkey caused for long stretches of the match, and on top of Çakir's late red card there is now a question mark over Mbappé's injury ahead of the team's upcoming fixtures.