Turkey (29th) v Wales (17th), Wed 16th June 17:00

After being worn down by the Italians in their opener to eventually lose 3-0, Turkey will know how crucial this game is if they’re to advance past the group stages. They most certainly looked at their most dangerous when getting Burak Yilmaz space on the flanks and running at the defence, and no doubt they’ll aim to do that this Wednesday.

A hard fought draw for Wales was as good as they could have hoped for, given the Swiss dominated the game for large parts and they had to come from behind to get the point. Kieffer Moore scored to equalizer to the delight of interim manager Robert Page, while goalkeeper Danny Ward had an absolute stormer. They’ll certainly want to try and get Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale more involved in this next game after they were left quiet for the large part of their opener though.

Senol Gunes will know this fixture will feel like more of a home game for them this time around with Azerbaijan being so close to Turkey, and that could play in their favour. They are, however, just W5-D7-L3 since the start of 2020, while against the teams ranked between 10th and 50th in the world, they’ve lost just once from nine outings over that period, drawing five of them.

The Welsh have lost just three of thier last 20 matches dating back to September 2019, as each of those defeats came against elite sides Belgium, France and England. Excluding those top sides and against teams inside the top-50 in the world rankings, they’ve gone W3-D5 over that period, as each of those games saw fewer than three strikes and a maximum of one goal in five, winning 1-0 in each of their victories. Testament to their structure and defensive resolve, they did only concede a total of three goals across those games.

That does make these two quite contrasting on the goals front, with Turkey having seen more than two goals in eight of their last 11 matches, although two 3-3 draws they had in that time came in friendlies, and in the more competitive Nations League and World Cup qualifiers, they’ve seen a maximum of two goals in 13 of their last 22 outings. At home is where most of those goals tend to come too, and if we exclude their games in Turkey, the ‘Under 2.5 Goals’ has been recorded in seven of their 11 outings over that period.  

Draw @ 3.1
0.5 Pts: Correct Score 1-1 @ 6.8