Arda Güler, the Left Foot Real Madrid Spent Three Years Learning to Use

Arda Güler

Photo: LawEnthusiast / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	February 25, 2005 Altındağ
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	Turkish Cup · Champions ×2
Individual awards	UEFA Club Football Awards

For most of his time at Real Madrid, the question about Arda Güler was where he fit. He is a left-footed playmaker who drifts in from the right, happiest with the ball at his feet and a defender in front of him, and he joined a squad built around sprinters. He spent long stretches watching them. Each coach gave a different answer. The fourth, José Mourinho, has made him the player Madrid look for when a match needs an idea, and the club is preparing to keep him for years.

The label came before the evidence. In Turkey he was called the next great hope of a national team that had waited a generation for one, and two seasons into his Madrid career the BBC was still introducing him as the “Turkish Messi”, the heir to Luka Modrić. He has spent his early twenties trying to make the comparison irrelevant.

From Ankara to Kadıköy

Güler grew up in Altındağ, a district of Ankara, where he was born on 25 February 2005. He joined the youth system of Gençlerbirliği as a child, in 2014, and Fenerbahçe’s scouts took him to Istanbul in February 2019, a few days before his fourteenth birthday. He signed his first professional contract in January 2021 and made his senior debut that August, as a substitute in a Europa League play-off against HJK. Three days later, in his first Süper Lig appearance, he set up a goal for Miha Zajc against Antalyaspor.

In March 2022, three weeks after turning 17, he became the youngest player to score for Fenerbahçe in the Süper Lig. When Mesut Özil left that summer, the club gave him the number 10 once worn by Alex de Souza, a heavy shirt in Kadıköy. He scored and assisted in a 2-0 win at Dynamo Kyiv for his first European goal, and in June 2023 he was the best player on the pitch as Fenerbahçe beat İstanbul Başakşehir 2-0 in the Turkish Cup final.

The clause and the waiting room

Real Madrid signed him in July 2023 on a six-year contract. His release clause was €17.5 million; Madrid paid around €20 million, and the extra money went to Fenerbahçe at the player’s own request. Then he got hurt. A string of injuries kept him out until January 2024, when he debuted in a Copa del Rey tie against Arandina. The first league goal came in March, in stoppage time against Celta Vigo, when he walked the ball around Vicente Guaita. His first league start, at Real Sociedad, also ended with a goal, and two more against Villarreal in May took him to six league goals in 330 minutes, the fastest anyone has reached that number in the club’s history. Madrid won the league and the Champions League; Güler never played in the European run, but the title made him the first Turkish player with a winner’s medal.

That summer he turned his promise into a national event. In Turkey’s opening match of Euro 2024 he curled in a goal against Georgia, the youngest player to score on his European Championship debut, a record that had belonged to Cristiano Ronaldo since 2004. He then set up a goal in the round-of-16 win over Austria, and Turkey reached the quarter-finals before losing to the Netherlands.

Back in Madrid, little changed. Under Carlo Ancelotti in 2024-25 he played mostly in the Copa del Rey, and only occasionally in the league, yet kept producing when picked: the winner against Getafe in April 2025, a goal and an assist against Celta a week and a half later.

What the highlights leave out

Güler’s highlight reel is long, and it has worked against him as much as for him. His best moments arrive as single, unrepeatable strikes, which feeds the idea of a luxury player for big nights rather than a midfielder a coach can trust for ninety minutes. The record supports both readings. His two goals in Munich in April 2026 did not stop a 4-3 defeat and elimination, and he finished that night with a red card shown after the final whistle, for protesting the dismissal of Eduardo Camavinga. At the World Cup, his best performance came against a United States side that had already qualified and rested most of its starters, after Turkey had lost the two matches that decided their group. The talent is not in question. Consistency, and the work he does when Madrid do not have the ball, are the questions that follow him into every team sheet.

Three coaches in one year

Xabi Alonso‘s arrival in 2025 changed his role. Alonso moved him into midfield and started him regularly; he scored and was named man of the match against Mallorca in August and was La Liga’s under-23 player of the month for September. Alonso was gone in January 2026, dismissed after losing the Supercopa final to Barcelona, and Álvaro Arbeloa took over a team that would finish the season without a trophy. Güler’s season kept rising regardless. Against Elche in March he scored from his own half, a 68-metre strike that equalled the longest goal in La Liga history and was voted the league’s goal of the season. In the Champions League quarter-final in Munich he scored after 34 seconds, the fastest goal in Madrid’s history in the competition, then added a free kick. UEFA named him the Champions League’s young player of the season.

With Turkey he helped win a qualifying play-off final in Pristina against Kosovo to reach the 2026 World Cup, the country’s first in 24 years. Vincenzo Montella’s team lost to Australia and Paraguay and were already out of Group D when Güler scored in a 3-2 win over the United States that earned him the man-of-the-match award.

Under Mourinho

Mourinho returned to the Bernabéu in June 2026 and has used Güler on the right and through the middle. He scored his first goal of the season in August, against Málaga, after coming on in the 86th minute; by late October he had three goals and four assists in his first eleven appearances, the latest a goal in the 2-0 win over RB Leipzig in the Champions League. “We are Real Madrid, and we must win every match,” he said afterwards. In the days that followed, Spanish and international outlets reported that he had agreed to extend his contract beyond 2029; the club had not yet announced it.

Güler is 21. The next few months will show whether a club that has changed coaches three times around him now builds its midfield on his left foot, or keeps treating him as the player who wins the occasional match on his own.

Tags: sports, athletes, footballers, Real Madrid, José Mourinho, Xabi Alonso, Arda Güler

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