LOS ANGELES — The 98th minute. SoFi Stadium contained 70,000 people and the noise of a match that had no business being so good, and when Kaan Ayhan slid to knock the ball home from six yards, Turkey had their first celebration of the 2026 World Cup. The United States, who had secured their place in the knockout round before the final whistle blew, absorbed their first loss of the tournament and walked off the Inglewood turf to something that felt almost like applause. The scoreline read 3-2, but the evening’s most telling detail belonged to Arda Guler, named Man of the Match after delivering, in a game that meant nothing for Turkey’s position, the tournament performance his side had desperately needed from the opening whistle three weeks ago.
The result alters nothing for the United States. Mauricio Pochettino’s side advance to the Round of 32, where they will face Bosnia in a fixture that carries genuine weight, a country that brings knockout-round experience and a raucous travelling support to every World Cup match they play. Group D finished with the USA on top on ten points, but the manner of this loss, three goals conceded against an already-eliminated side, handed Pochettino a clear set of questions going into the knockouts. For Vincenzo Montella and Turkey, the only meaningful achievement tonight was making the scoreboard reflect what Arda Guler was capable of all along.
He announced himself in the 10th minute. Guler received possession between the lines, turned his marker and drove a low finish inside Matt Turner’s right post, becoming Turkey’s youngest World Cup goalscorer and scoring their first goal of the entire tournament. The Real Madrid midfielder, who set a La Liga record with a 68-metre goal against Elche in March, looked immediately at home on a stage that had until tonight largely eluded him. Turkey’s support players pressed higher after the equalizer. The game stopped being a formality.
The United States had led first. Auston Trusty stabbed home from close range off a Sebastian Berhalter corner in the third minute, drilling the ball past Mert Gunok at the near post to make it 1-0. Pochettino had started ten changes from the lineup that beat Morocco four days earlier, with Pulisic watching the first half from the bench as part of a planned rotation designed to protect key players ahead of the knockout stage. The logic held until Turkey’s pressing game exposed a midfield without the capacity to contain Guler’s movement, and by the time Baris Yilmaz doubled the lead on 31 minutes, cutting through the space the depleted USA centre willingly offered, Montella’s side were controlling a game nobody had expected them to win.
Halftime arrived with Turkey leading 2-1 and the majority of SoFi Stadium in a state of genuine confusion. Montella spoke to his players on the pitch rather than in the tunnel, briefly, then disappeared inside. What he told them produced the sharper, more direct Turkey that appeared after the restart. The midfield pressed the first USA ball forward, Guler dropped deep to receive and drive, and for the first time in this tournament Montella had a game that rewarded his system rather than testing its limits.
Pochettino sent Christian Pulisic on at the interval and the match’s character shifted within minutes. Sebastian Berhalter restored parity on 49 minutes with a ferociously struck shot from the edge of the box that gave Mert Gunok no chance. The stadium noise, which had built steadily through the Turkey goals, compressed briefly into uncertainty before expanding again as both sides continued to press. What followed was the best twenty minutes of open soccer either Group D team had produced across the entire group stage.
Pulisic’s introduction tightened the USA’s structure in possession and created a tempo Turkey’s defensive cover struggled to match. Montella responded by withdrawing his holding midfielder and introducing a second attacking runner in the 67th minute, and the game tilted again. The clock, by this point, had become the USA’s best defender. With three minutes of regulation remaining, it seemed possible that Pochettino would take a draw and call it a rotation success. Then came the move that changed the evening’s verdict.
Can Uzun won the ball at the back post in the 98th minute and rolled it across to Ayhan, who slid to knock it home from close range before the goalkeeper could recover. The reaction on Turkey’s bench was not joy so much as relief: the uncomplicated catharsis of ending a disappointing World Cup on the right side of the scoreboard, against the host nation’s co-host neighbours, at a stadium that holds the whole of American soccer’s ambitions for this tournament and the ones that will follow it.
Guler spoke afterward about the earlier performances without prompting or deflection. He acknowledged that the expectations placed on him had been formed by a Real Madrid season that turned a 21-year-old into a tactical reference point across European football. He apologized again for the opening match against Paraguay. The Man of the Match award for tonight, he said, was the kind of recognition that felt like arriving too late to a party you had been meant to host. He said he understood why Turkish supporters had been frustrated. He said he would be at the next World Cup.
For the United States, three goals conceded tonight against a side already eliminated carries a weight that the final standings obscure. As CBS Sports reported through the second half, the USA midfield without Pulisic struggled to build any meaningful transition defence against Turkey’s pressing game, and Bosnia will present a more disciplined version of that same structural test. The tournament brings the largest domestic audience in American soccer history to every USA fixture. Pochettino’s side will need to be sharper. What Turkey would have looked like with Guler at this level from matchday one is the question Montella will carry home without an answer. The contract expires in July. The federation has not spoken publicly. Only Guler’s future is clear, and it looks nothing like the tournament that just ended.
