Football Daily | Turkey need another rebrand after failing to take flight at World Cup

WHAT’S IN A NAME? When Turkey changed to Türkiye in 2022, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced it was because the new name was “the best representation and expression of the Turkish people’s culture, civilisation, and values.” The rebrand, though, also had a less lofty reason. “The association with the bird genuinely annoys Erdoğan and the people around him,” explained Selim Koru of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, while even state broadcaster TRT conceded that the loose-necked Christmas bird was at least a factor in the revamp. And although getting names right is important – just ask the good folk at Starbucks – some things never change. Save for the 2002 tournament in which the country finished a remarkable third, Turkey/Türkiye have an absolutely dreadful record when it comes to the World Cup – with 2026 being just their third appearance at a finals – and now they are out again after two miserable defeats to the flamin’ Socceroos and Paraguay. The latter was made all the more painful by the fact that the South American side played for more than a half with 10 men, after former Newcastle scuttler Miguel Almirón became the first player to be shown a red card for covering his mouth while speaking to an opponent. “We should have won these games … everybody’s sad, everybody’s crying ,” sobbed umlaut enthusiast/Turkish wonderkid Arda Güler, who alongside Juventus’s Kenan Yildiz, it had been hoped might inspire his nation to come good on their “dark horses” tag. …