Twenty-seven minutes. That is how long Italy needed in Bursa to make the rest of the evening a formality, and by the time Turkey worked out what was happening to them the scoreboard read 3-0 and the home crowd had gone quiet. The final score was 4-1. It could comfortably have been worse.
Alessandro Bastoni started it in the ninth minute, which is not the usual way an Italy game breaks open, and Davide Frattesi doubled the lead on twenty-two. Five minutes after that Michael Kayode arrived to make it three, Francesco Pio Esposito supplying the pass. Three goals from three different areas of the pitch, none of them scored by a recognised centre-forward, against a Turkey side that had spent the build-up talking about what it would do to Italy at home.
Montella's evening unravelled before the interval
Vincenzo Montella had promised a Turkey performance in Bursa. What he got instead was a half in which his side could not get near Sandro Tonali and Nicolo Fagioli in the middle, and a back line that kept losing runners at set pieces. Merih Demiral wore the armband. Ozan Kabak was booked on 72 minutes by which point it hardly registered. Can Uzun picked up a caution on thirty-eight for a foul born of frustration rather than tactics.
Orkun Kokcu was withdrawn at the interval for Ismail Yuksek, which tells you how the first forty-five had gone for Turkey's midfield. Arda Guler stayed on and kept trying, and by the closing stages he was the one dragging the ball forward, setting up a Eren Elmali effort on eighty-seven that flew high and wide. By then it was pride.
Yilmaz gave them ninety seconds of belief
Turkey did come out for the second half with something, and two minutes into it Baris Alper Yilmaz pulled one back from an Oguz Aydin pass. The Galatasaray forward, who wears 21 for his country, gave the Matli Stadyumu about ninety seconds of noise before Italy shut it down again.
Esposito scored the fourth on fifty, and after that the game settled into the kind of comfortable Italian control that Roberto Mancini's side has been building all year. Gianluigi Donnarumma barely had to move. Kayode, having scored at one end, spent the closing minutes winning free-kicks at the other. Yilmaz was booked on fifty-four, four minutes after his goal, which sums up the mood.
What it means for Group 1
Italy sit in a League A group with Belgium and France, so a four-goal away win carries weight beyond the three points. Mancini has been rotating hard, and this was a night where the depth showed: Sebastiano Esposito started and came off on sixty-three, Giacomo Raspadori was replaced at half-time by Nicolo Cambiaghi, Gianluca Scamacca and Giovanni Di Lorenzo both got minutes late on. Five substitutions, no loss of shape.
For Turkey the maths is now awkward and the mood worse. Montella's job was to make Bursa a fortress for a group like this one. Instead his side conceded three inside half an hour to an Italy team that did not need to be at its best.
Match facts: Turkey 1-4 Italy, Uefa Nations League League A Group 1, Matli Stadyumu Ataturk Spor Kompleksi, Bursa, Monday 28 September 2026. Goals: Bastoni 9, Frattesi 22, Kayode 27 (Francesco Pio Esposito), Baris Alper Yilmaz 47 (Oguz Aydin), Francesco Pio Esposito 50. Half-time: 0-3. Bookings: Uzun 38, Yilmaz 54, Kabak 72.
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