- 1 Turkey vs France: World Cup fourth against a team dumped out in the group stage as Group A1 kicks off with a clear gap
- 2 Turkey: three goals in three World Cup matches and a rapid exit
- 3 France: 20 goals at the World Cup, a tight defence, then a finish that went badly off the rails
- 4 Football Prediction Turkey vs France
- 5 First, a word on our free tips
- 6 No commitment from us
- 7 Information changes
- 8 Your role
- 9 Responsible gambling first
- 10 Legal age
- 11 About the images…
Turkey vs France: World Cup fourth against a team dumped out in the group stage as Group A1 kicks off with a clear gap 
France finished fourth at the 2026 World Cup. Turkey, by contrast, were out after the group stage, the first nation to be mathematically eliminated from the tournament.
The two sides meet on Friday 25 September at 20:45, at Yildiz Entegre Kocaeli Stadyumu, on matchday one of the 2026-27 Nations League.
Group A1 brings together France, Italy, Belgium and Turkey. UEFA placed France in Pot 1 and Turkey in Pot 4, the biggest status gap possible inside the same group.
Zinedine Zidane has been in charge of Les Bleus since his appointment on 28 July. He named his first squad on 18 September: 23 players, including five who had never worn the blue shirt before.
Vincenzo Montella comes into this camp with four first-time call-ups in his group. Turkey are coming off a poor summer and the visit of France is about as awkward a way as they could have to get going again.
The imbalance on paper does not settle everything. Turkey are at home, in a stadium that will be behind them, against a French coach who has still not taken charge of a competitive match.
This camp features four games for France: Turkey on Friday, Belgium on 28 September, Italy on 2 October and then Belgium again on 5 October. Zidane’s early spell is being asked to survive a brutal run of fixtures.
Turkey: three goals in three World Cup matches and a rapid exit 
Turkey scored three goals in three World Cup matches. Their first two outings ended in defeat, without them scoring once.
On 14 June in Vancouver, Australia won 2-0 in a scoreline that almost flattered Turkey. Five days later, Paraguay beat them 1-0 with a goal in the second minute.
That defeat came with some ugly numbers attached: 33 shots, zero goals. That kind of attacking output without a finish says plenty about the lack of sharpness where it matters.
The response came too late. On 25 June, Turkey beat the United States 3-2 thanks to a goal in the ninth minute of stoppage time, by which point they had already been eliminated for six days.
Montella now returns with a record of one win in three matches and five goals conceded. The four first-time call-ups in his squad show just how close this is to a fresh start from scratch.
The fixture list is not doing them any favours. After France, Turkey host Italy on 28 September: two home games in four days against the group’s top two seeds.
Turkey are back in League A after spending last season in the lower tier. The draw was far from kind: two of their three opponents, France and Belgium, reached at least the quarter-finals of the last World Cup.
The match is being played at Yildiz Entegre Kocaeli Stadyumu, away from Turkey’s traditional football heartlands. The ground does not often stage a game of this size, and crowd support remains one of the few things working in the hosts’ favour.
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France: 20 goals at the World Cup, a tight defence, then a finish that went badly off the rails 
France scored 20 goals in eight World Cup matches, an average of 2.5 per game. Scoring was never the problem for Les Bleus this summer.
The group stage was handled from start to finish: 3-1 against Senegal, 3-0 against Iraq, then 4-1 against Norway with a hat-trick from Ousmane Dembele on the final day.
The knockout run followed the same pattern. Sweden were swept aside 3-0, Paraguay were edged 1-0 by a Kylian Mbappe penalty, and Morocco were beaten 2-0 in the quarter-finals with the captain scoring and setting up another.
Then came Spain. Beaten 2-0 in the semi-final in Dallas, Les Bleus followed that with a wild 6-4 defeat to England in the third-place game after going 4-0 down at the break.
The defensive contrast is stark: four goals conceded in the first seven matches of the tournament, six in the last one alone. That is the part Zidane needs to sort out first.
The coach made his call on the armband as soon as the squad was announced: Mbappe stays captain. Five newcomers complete the group: Guillaume Restes, Jerey Jacquet, Lucas Da Cunha, Andy Diouf and Esteban Lepaul.
The tournament confirmed Mbappe’s place in France’s record books. He became France’s all-time top scorer in the game against Senegal, then finished the World Cup with eight goals and 20 in the competition overall.
Dembele also made a major impact with five goals in the tournament, including a hat-trick against Norway. That attacking depth remains France’s biggest card as this new cycle begins.
Expected Turkey line-up: Not announced at time of publication.
Expected France line-up: Not announced at time of publication.
Football Prediction Turkey vs France
Our tip: France to win by at least two goals (handicap -1)
Turkey failed to score against either of the two teams that beat them at the World Cup, Australia and Paraguay. Against a France attack that produced 20 goals in eight matches, the attacking mismatch is obvious.
Les Bleus won their first four games in the tournament 3-1, 3-0, 4-1 and 3-0, all four victories by at least two goals. The goals market backs that up too, with the total set at 3.5 for this match, the highest of the opening round in League A.
A straight France win is priced around 1.45, too short to play on its own. The -1 handicap pays out much better on the same basic outcome, and that is the pick here.
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