Altay Bayindir, the slapstick own goal and a moment to sum up one man’s rustiness

You always know something bad has happened on a football pitch when nobody sees it the first time around.

On television, the cameras had cut to Cristiano Ronaldo flapping his arms and complaining that he had not received a pass.

In the stands, many people had seen a Portugal attack break down and thus turned their attentions elsewhere: maybe to the towering stands of the Signal Iduna Park, maybe to the glistening sun above the stands, and for some of us in the media seats, to our laptops.

But the most important person who missed it was Altay Bayindir.

The catastrophes that happen in slow motion are the worst. In a modern game that has become so quick — almost too quick — Turkey centre-back Samet Akaydin’s errant back pass seemed to creep along the ground so slowly.

It was just slow enough that Bayindir thought he had a chance of clawing it away from goal, but just quick enough that those of us who eventually looked up to see what was happening knew he just would not make it.

Bayindir chased after it, diving full length in desperation like that bit in The Dark Knight where Batman throws himself down a sloped roof to try to save Rachel Dawes, who had been cast from the building by The Joker. Like Batman, he didn’t catch his target before falling off the edge. Unlike Batman, he didn’t have a cape to prevent the worst from happening.

Turkey right-back Zeki Celik, who up to that point was having a terrific game and completely neutralising Rafael Leao, tried to rescue things, too, but simply ended up in a heap of despair over the goal line as the referee’s watch confirmed the worst.

Celik looked at Bayindir. Bayindir looked at Akaydin. Akaydin looked at Bayindir. But it was 2-0 to Portugal; a goal conceded without any rational explanation.

Whose fault was it? Akaydin’s for not looking when he played the ball back to his goalkeeper? Bayindir’s for not anticipating there would be a back pass heading in his direction? Ronaldo’s for distracting everyone with his mild tantrum? The cruel gods of fate, keen to strike down another unfortunate soul with their misfortune?

Maybe it doesn’t really matter whose fault it was. Turkey coach Vincenzo Montella certainly wasn’t handing out any blame, writing it off as one of those things after the game.

“Would you like to know all the details?” he said when asked if he said anything to either of the players involved at half-time. “There was a misunderstanding, that’s quite clear. Sometimes this happens. Unfortunately, it happened to us today. I would have preferred it to have happened to our opponents, too.”

You can understand his reaction.

In Montella’s mind, this was a calamity for which he could not legislate. There are no ‘don’t score any bone-headed own-goals’ exercises on the training field and it probably won’t form part of anyone’s pre-match team talk either. So he will do everything he can to just put it out of his and his players’ minds.

It does raise a question about his goalkeeper, though. To a point, Montella was in a tricky position given that Mert Gunok, who played in goal for their first game against Georgia, picked up a knee problem and was not fit to play.

That left him a choice between Manchester United’s Bayindir or Trabzonspor goalkeeper Urgucan Cakir. The latter hasn’t enjoyed a particularly good domestic season: his team finished a distant third behind Galatasaray and Fenerbahce and he conceded 44 goals in 35 games.

But at least he’s been playing. Which is more than you can say for Bayindir who, since moving to United last August, had made a total of two competitive appearances for club and country.

Bayindir has been a victim of circumstance at United. He was signed very much as an understudy last summer after the expensive and much-heralded arrival of Andre Onana from Inter Milan. Onana was not just a brand new, first-choice goalkeeper, he was a brand new, first-choice goalkeeper who Erik ten Hag wanted to help change how the whole team played, not just to keep goal.

Ten Hag and his coaching staff were extremely invested in the idea of Onana being a success. So they gave him as much time in the team as possible.

In all the games when you’d expect to give your backup goalkeeper some time, Onana started and Bayindir was on the bench. When they played Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup in September, Onana started and Bayindir was on the bench. When they played Newcastle in the same competition, Onana started and Bayindir was on the bench. When they played Wigan in the FA Cup in January, Onana started and Bayindir was on the bench.

Onana even delayed his trip to the Africa Cup of Nations with Cameroon so he could be more available for United, in the end only missing one game — an FA Cup fourth-round trip to face Newport County. Bayindir started and conceded twice (although both goals were deflections, so it would be harsh to blame him too much) and… that was it. He did not play another minute for the rest of the domestic season.

The next time he pulled his gloves on in an actual game was for a Turkey friendly, against Italy in April. He kept a clean sheet and did pretty well, but not well enough to displace Gunok as Turkey’s No 1.

And that’s it. His only other competitive appearance since joining United was replacing Cakir in a Euro 2024 qualifier against Wales in May.

Would Bayindir have avoided the calamity of the own goal had he got a few more Carabao Cup games under his belt for United? Probably not. But the fact remains that Montella took a terrific gamble by choosing a goalkeeper with a grand total of 157 minutes of competitive action to his name since last August.

Maybe it’s pointless trying to analyse or attribute any meaning to a freak moment of slapstick comedy like that. Maybe, like Montella, you have to forget about it as quickly as possible.

Maybe, like many of us did the first time around, you just have to look the other way.

(Top photo: Bernd Thissen/picture alliance via Getty Images)