Turkey’s Euro 2016 squad announced

Turkish Manager Fatih Terim has named a pretty sizable provisional squad for the European Championships next month. 31 players in total have made it to the first stage of selection with the final 23 to be decided on May 31st.

There isn’t any Premier League representation but Arda Turan will be the key player for Turkey this Summer. Liverpool fans will remember Nuri Sahin’s brief loan spell back in 2013. That spell on Merseyside didn’t particularly pull up any trees and with him now back at Dortmund he looks more like the player that at one time also had a spell at Real Madrid

Terim will look to Burak Yilmaz and Melvut Erdinc to get the goals and with four Forwards selected you would imagine they will all be going to France, with 8 players not making the trip you would imagine the excess will be removed from the highly competitive Defensive and Midfield ranks where 23 players have been chosen. Unless Terim goes totally mental and decides to leave all the goalkeepers and forwards at home, that would be quite interesting and definite first in major tournament Football

Unfortunately for fans of slightly left field Football, I can’t see that happening. Below is the provisional squad in full

Goalkeepers: Ali Sasal Vural (Eskisehirspor), Harun Tekin (Bursaspor), Onur Kivrak (Trabzonspor), Volkan Babacan (Istanbul Basaksehir).

Defenders: Gokhan Gonul (Fenerbahce), Sener Ozbayrakli (Fenerbahçe), Ahmet Calik (Genclerbirligi), Çaglar Soyuncu (Altinordu), Hakan Balta (Galatasaray), Mehmet Topal (Fenerbahce), Semih Kaya (Galatasaray), Serdar Aziz (Bursaspor), Caner Erkin (Fenerbahce), İsmail Koybasi (Besiktas).

Midfielders: Emre Mor (Nordsjaelland), Gokhan Tore (Besiktas), Volkan Sen (Fenerbahce), Yasin Oztekin (Galatasaray), Hakan Calhanogu (Bayer Leverkusen), Mahmut Tekdemir (Istanbul Basaksehir), Nuri Sahin (Borussia Dortmund), Oguzhan Ozyakup (Besiktas), Ozan Tufan (Fenerbahce), Selcuk Inan (Galatasaray), Alper Potuk (Fenerbahce), Arda Turan (Barcelona), Olcay Sahan (Besiktas).

Forwards: Burak Yilmaz (Beijing Guoan), Cenk Tosun (Besiktas), Mevlut Erdinc (Guingamp), Yunus Malli (Mainz).