Türkiye vs USA

The Group D final-round match at LA Stadium on 25 June 2026 is structured almost ideally for a draw — both teams plausibly arrive with four points from their first two fixtures, both can guarantee passage with a single point, and Pochettino and Montella will both know going in that conservative football is sufficient. That said, the match-up is also the most tactically interesting in the group on paper: Pochettino’s hour-long high press against the only other team in the group with the technical talent to play through it.

The structural concern for Türkiye is what every pre-tournament tactical analyst has highlighted — the double-pivot of Çalhanoğlu and Kökçü is vulnerable to aggressive pressing of the type Pochettino has built his career on. Salih Özcan (Borussia Dortmund) is likely to drop into the pivot from the bench or as a 4-3-3 starting choice, freeing one of the front four. If Pochettino can press Türkiye’s central midfield into giving the ball away, the USMNT’s transition attack — Pulisic, Balogun, McKennie all running into space — can produce 3-on-3 or 4-on-4 numerical advantages. The structural concern for the USA is the mirror: Türkiye’s front four (Güler, Yıldız, Aktürkoğlu, and either Yılmaz or a young centre-forward) is the most talented attacking unit they will face all group stage, and Adams as the sole defensive midfielder must protect a back three that has not yet seen a tournament-quality combination of speed and technical creativity at this level.

The all-time head-to-head is light. The most relevant precedent is the 2002 World Cup group stage, where Türkiye beat the USA 3-1 in Suwon en route to their third-place finish — a fixture watched in Istanbul as the moment Turkish football arrived. The teams have played a small number of senior friendlies since, with no clear pattern of dominance. This will be their first World Cup meeting since 2002 and the first ever on US soil.

The prediction is USA 1-1 Türkiye, with USA winning Group D on goal difference if both teams arrive on four points. The realistic distribution of outcomes is wider than for the other matchups: a USA 2-0 win is plausible if Pochettino’s press pays off early; a Türkiye 2-1 win is plausible if Güler and Yıldız have a tournament-defining 90 minutes; a 0-0 draw is also possible if both managers genuinely play to defend the lead they already have. The most realistic single-line scoring sheet is 1-1, with Pulisic scoring for the USA in the first half and Güler converting a Çalhanoğlu set-piece in the second.