They’re leaving no stone unturned in the endeavour to make this city a small corner of Turkey on Wednesday.
The red flags with the white star and crescent adorn windows in every street and have even been draped across the entrance to the Wales training base. The half-and-half scarves are Turkey/Azerbaijan.
The front page of Tuesday’s Respublika newspaper was dominated by the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan signing a new trade deal here before paying a symbolic visit to Shusha.
Turkey will be supported by a large crowd of faithful supporters for their clash against Wales in Baku on Wednesday (pictured: fanatic fans enjoying their time in Rome last week)
Baku (above) has become a small corner of Turkey and Wales are set for a fierce atmosphere
The city is in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory, which his own country’s military might enabled Azerbaijan to seize from Armenia in a bitterly-fought war last year.
Erdogan will receive a hero’s welcome at the Olympic Stadium, where an estimated 29,000 Turkey-supporting fans will amass to see the side face Wales.
Around 4,000 are expected from Turkey with vaccinations but no visas required. The rest will be locals. ‘Baku will be good for Turkey’ proclaimed Tuesday’s Futbol+ paper. That was putting it mildly.
Turkey lost their opening Euro 2020 group fixture to Italy and will be looking to bounce back
‘Azerbaijan citizens are our friends and brothers,’ Turkey’s captain Burak Yilmaz declared. ‘Since we came here, we have felt it. We will be at home. With their help we can win this game.’
It might not be quite the full, unadulterated version of Istanbul’s ‘Welcome to Hell’ experience but it will be the most febrile environment these championships have known by a distance.
Gareth Bale flashes a coy grin when obstacles to Wales are broached, which says ‘no problem.’ but a bit of local abuse really does seem to be something he feeds on.
He gave a bit back to Leicester’s fans on the last day of the Premier League season. ‘They weren’t too happy with it but it’s those things that make sport, make football,’ he said of that exchange last week. Wednesday seems no different.
Wales star Gareth Bale has thrived on local abuse in the past and says the jeering ‘spurs us on’
‘Of course they’re not saying great things, or booing us, but you want to silence them,’ he said of the supporters. ‘It spurs us on to be a bit more ruthless on the pitch.’
Dean Saunders, the former Wales forward who scored 15 goals in 27 games during the 1995-96 season at Galatasaray describes ballbearings flying round him from the stands on the pitch and away fans knowing the route of his side’s team bus.
‘When the national team play, they all get together,’ he says. ‘Besiktas, Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Trabzonspor – for the fans of those teams there’s suddenly no division.’ He describes an ‘underdog spirit’ the Turkish national team like to feed off.
But this support cuts both ways. The flip side is the pressure that Senol Gunes’ team will be under to win, after a desultory performance which brought a 3-0 defeat by Italy in Rome. Yilmaz admitted that the players were ‘very fragile and broken for two days after a performance which lacked ambition.
Turkey are under pressure to win the next game after delivering a showing lacking in ambition
A bad start on Wednesday and they could incur the wrath of an expectant support. ‘If we won at Galatasaray, I’d go out for a haircut,’ Saunders recalls of his Istanbul season. ‘If we lost, I didn’t go out.’
Wales will be helped by the fact that the game will be played in a vast modern bowl which is at just under half its 60,000 capacity to allow social distancing.
Their players will certainly have a clearer sense of direction than when they last played Turkey – a 6-4 World Cup qualifier defeat in August 1997, when Bobby Gould played a 24-year-old Ryan Giggs at left back, Gary Speed as a left-sided centre half and substituted Neville Southall for Paul Jones at half-time.
Hakan Sukur scored four, including two in the last 15 minutes. Southall never played for his country again.
Wales will be aided by the fact the game is being held in the vast and modern Olympic Stadium
Daniel James might not possess Giggs’ capacity to lull defenders into a false sense of security – feigning disinterest before accelerating past them. But several former Welsh internationals have been struck by the improvement of the delivery with his less strong left foot in the past three Wales games.
‘You’re also starting to see him run behind without the ball to get the ball someone has played over,’ says Saunders. ‘As forwards, we were encouraged all the time to come short and spin. Run without the ball. Not all players do it. He does.’
There is no better time for a signature performance from Bale, whose team-mates struggled to get him on the ball against Switzerland four days ago. There was a mild sense of irritation from him on Tuesday night when he was asked how he could step up and help younger players cope with the atmosphere.
Bale will look to put in a signature performances against Turkey and wants the team to step up
‘It’s not about me stepping up. It’s about the team stepping up,’ he said. ‘Everyone always goes on about individual performances and individual this and that and the other. And who scores. Who does what.
‘The most important thing is we work hard collectively as a team and deliver together. Everyone’s too driven by this individual performances, when you can’t do anything without your team-mates.’
Interim manager Rob Page avoided a direct answer to the question of how he intended to get Bale and Aaron Ramsey more involved.
He suggested that there would be minimal changes from Saturday’s team, yet after Bale mentioned the heat, he suggested that it had been a problem. The evening kick-off – 8pm local time – should make the conditions cooler than Saturday.
Interim boss Rob Page suggested there would be minimal changes from the Switzerland draw
Page has been a remote figure at this tournament, speaking to media only through pre-match virtual press conferences. If he has a motivational component, then his public utterances certainly haven’t revealed it.
A win was not imperative, Page said. This was a game Wales could ‘do all right in’. By contrast, Turkey counterpart Gunes came out all guns blazing, declared this is Turkey’s ‘final.’
The Turkish fans – flooding by the coach-load into Baku on Tuesday night – may be just the motivation Wales need.