Turkey boss Stefan Kuntz reckons Rangers is the perfect place for Ridvan Yilmaz to develop as he vowed to keep the injured Ibrox star in his thoughts.
The German says the 21-year-old will prosper from working with under-fire manager Gio van Bronckhorst. Left-back Yilmaz had shown glimpses of his talent after finally breaking into van Bronckhorst’s first team last month following his summer move from Besiktas.
But the 21-year-old broke down with a hamstring injury just eight minutes into his seventh appearance for the Light Blues against Aberdeen earlier this month. That ruled him out of joining up with Kuntz’s squad to face Scotland. The former striker - a Euro 96 winner with Germany - said: “First he had to get over the emotion of leaving Besiktas - one of the biggest clubs in Turkey. “I saw Rangers in the final against Frankfurt so I was thinking this is a good decision for Ridvan ’s development.
“He has a great team and support around him but also a great coach. So I’m really sad he is injured and that this development stage has stopped for some weeks.
“If I’m right he has to stop until the end of the year then it will take some time. But after that definitely I will come to Scotland to watch him.”
Turkey head into Wednesday's match on the back of two poor results in September. A draw with Luxembourg was followed up by a 2-1 defeat to the Faroe Islands although promotion from Nations League Group C was already secured.
Kuntz said: “Thanks for reminding me! But this is another squad, we have missing players back with us and we learned a lot from the painful lesson we got last time.
“We want to take the experience and make sure we do it better because right now it’s only one goal in our head - concentrating everything towards the qualifiers starting in March.”
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