Three times coming back to seal stunning victories, Turkey's taste for drama caught the eye at UEFA EURO 2008™ before their luck finally ran out against Germany.

Late goals
No-one can deny that Fatih Terim's team have been among the greatest entertainers at UEFA EURO 2008™. With late goals helping to secure victories in their games against Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Croatia, they have tested the nerves of their fans at the finals, and been involved in some of the tournament's most dramatic matches, not least the 3-2 defeat against Germany that denied them a place in the final in Vienna. Given that they went into that match with five players injured and four more suspended, even that result seemed incredible.

Turkish ethos
Terim's future may be in the balance as he considers a return to club football but the team he has helped to create is likely to form the nucleus of the sides that will challenge for finals places at the 2010 FIFA World Cup and UEFA EURO 2012™, and fans can only hope that their never-say-die spirit will endure. Terim expressed that ethos when he said: "There are two ways to live – one is to believe everything is a miracle, the second is to believe nothing is a miracle. I belong to the second group."

'Crazy Turks'
Striker Nihat Kahveci, and attacking midfielders Arda Turan and Tuncay Şanlı also subscribed to that view during the tournament, and had they been available for the Germany game, who knows what might have happened. Defender Servet Çetin was no less heroic, defying serious injury problems to play throughout the group stage before finally being confined to the bench in the knockout stages. As central defender Emre Aşik said, referring to a popular book of the same name: "Now I can understand why they named us 'Crazy Turks'."

Major achievement
Their campaign certainly had a touch of madness about it, and should they have learned to start games as well as they finished them, Terim's men might have had a more comfortable ride – though they did hit the ground running against Germany only to go on and lose. The coach always maintained that it was more important to end a game happy than to start it well, and perhaps that spirit informed what has been the biggest Turkish footballing achievement since finishing third at the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan.

Next step
Following Galatasaray AS's success in the 1999/00 UEFA Cup and that thrilling World Cup campaign, Turkish football seemed to have hit something of a plateau, but Fenerbahçe SK's progress to the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals this season and now UEFA EURO 2008™ success look like evidence of another surge in national morale. Headline writers back in Turkey have tapped into that mood during the tournament, with plenty of celebrations of the team's character. Now the challenge is to see what the Crescent and Stars can do next.

Different trophy
The 2002 World Cup achievement had seemed for many like the all-time pinnacle of Turkish football, but UEFA EURO 2008™ has seen them match that and even hint that better might lie ahead. Losing against Germany in Basel was undoubtedly a massive disappointment, and a defeat their performance did not merit, but the campaign as a whole was an unqualified success. They can now line up for 2010 World Cup qualifying without needing to believe in miracles to imagine that they might get their hands on a different trophy in two years time.