Turkish boss fires first shots

Mustaf Denizli, the Turkish manager, upped the ante in the psychological war for Saturday's big game when he accused the FAI and Mick McCarthy, in turn, of attempting to damage the morale of his players.

The official Turkish party is based at the Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links which was home to the new Rugby World Cup winners, Australia, during their Irish stay. Denizli's problems, it seems, have less to do with the quality of the hotel as the fact that the FAI had nominated Belfield as their official training ground during their time here.

Stressing that the cross city journey took 90 minutes in peak traffic, Denizli said that the arrangement was unacceptable. "If they chose to do this, then we will do the same to them when they come to Turkey," he said.

Denizli also sought to ridicule McCarthy's statement that several of his players are injured. Stating that it was all part of a grand plan to lull his team into false security, he said. "I think the Irish know that we have a better team. Now they try to fool us by saying that many of their best players are injured. They do this, so that they can hurt the morale of our players. But it will not succeed.

The Turkish squad, who are accompanied on their travels here by security personnel, chose to overcome the problem in part yesterday by training at the nearby Portmarnock Leisure facility in the morning before going to the ALSAA complex, almost within hailing distance of the Irish team's base, for their later session.

Like McCarthy, Denizli is expected to make a late team selection but he hinted yesterday that it is likely to show at least one change from the team which beat Germany.

Reasoning that different opposition demands a different approach by his team, he indicated that he is likely to deploy an extra midfield player and go with only one specialist striker, Hakan Sukur in a 3-6-1 formation.

Ironically, the man to lose out in that situation would be Arif who scored all three goals in their rout of Northern Ireland in Belfast. Now, he is at high risk of being omitted to accommodate his Galatasaray clubmate, Hakan Unsal.

Unperturbed, it seemed, Arif was making all the right gestures after training yesterday afternoon. "It doesn't really matter who plays, as long as we win the tie - and we will," he said. "We have not come to Ireland just to defend. We think we can win both legs of the tie."