Fit enough to start again, Wright was in top form for Antalyaspor
A fit-again Haji Wright is just what Antalyaspor needed.
The U.S. men’s national team striker scored twice and added an assist as his side cruised past Kayserispor 4-0 on Saturday.
The win is especially helpful in the extremely tight race to avoid relegation in the Turkish Süper Lig: despite jumping into a tie for ninth place with the victory, Antalyaspor is just five points above the drop zone.
Wright opened the scoring with a classic bit of target man play. First, he checked to the ball to connect with Alassane Ndao, and then spread play over to the left as Kayserispor never got the chance to adjust. Güray Vural’s cross was just out of reach for Ndao, and Bünyamin Balcı’s back-post shot crashed off the post.
Fortunately for Antalyaspor, Wright kept his run going, and the rebound gave him the easy job of just guiding the shot through some chaos and into the back of the net.
¡GOL DEL ANTALYASPOR! 🔥
Haji Wright 🇺🇸 abre el marcador para los locales 🤩
Wright then added an assist early in the second half, with some distinctly un-“big lad” play. Throwing a series of moves out near the endline, he put Kayserispor defender Dimitrios Kolovetsios in a blender before teeing Fredy up for a close-range tap-in.
¡OTRO DEL ANTALYASPOR! 💪
Haji Wright asiste y Fredy aumenta la ventaja de los escorpiones 🦂🔥
Wright’s dominant performance got an appropriate exclamation point in the 68th minute, as he made it 3-0. Fredy’s incisive ball in behind for Ndao opened the door for the winger to drive in a cross, and despite being 15 yards from goal, Wright powered his header into the bottom corner past a despairing Bilal Bayazit.
The outstanding performance was huge for Antalyaspor, who had to do without Wright (whose 12 goals have him in fourth in the Golden Boot race) for six games due to a thigh muscle strain suffered in early January.
Wright was able to play nine minutes off the bench in Monday’s 3-1 loss at Kasimpasa, a game in which Antalyaspor scored just their second goal in their previous 492 minutes of play.
However, Wright was fit to play 71 minutes against Kayserispor, and based on the result, Antalyaspor couldn’t have been happier to have him back.
It’s not clear whether Wright has a long-term future at the club though. Back in January, the team’s vice president Emrah Celik said they’d had talks with eight teams over a possible winter transfer, and given that Wright just keeps scoring, that move seems more likely to materialize this summer.
The forward tells Pro Soccer Wire he’s in the dark over his USMNT future
Haji Wright scored for Antalyaspor on Sunday, as he so often does – he ranks second in the Turkish Süper Lig’s scoring charts with nine goals this season. Among U.S. strikers in Europe, only Josh Sargent, on eight goals for Norwich City, is on the same tier of sheer productivity.
With those nine comprising the bulk of Antalyaspor’s 19 total goals thus far, Wright also carries the burden of being far and away the main finishing threat for his club, a weight that much heavier when your team drifts in and around the relegation places, as Antalyaspor did earlier in the campaign.
He’s currently on a better pace than his breakthrough 2021-22, where he scored 14 times in 32 matches on loan to earn a permanent transfer from Danish side SønderjyskE amid heavy interest from England’s Hull City and other suitors. He capped that season with a U.S. national team call-up and a goal, from the penalty spot, on his senior international debut vs. Morocco in June.
Does all that add up to a realistic shot at the USMNT’s World Cup roster when it’s named on Wednesday? Your guess is as good as Wright’s, it seems.
“I mean, when you’re playing well, normally you get rewarded with a call-up,” Wright told Pro Soccer Wire in an exclusive conversation from Turkey this week. “And then if you don’t get called up, it kind of means you won’t be a part of the tournament. So it’s difficult for me to give a solid answer, because I don’t really know. It kind of feels like it’s up in the air.
“No, nothing yet,” he said when asked about recent contact from Gregg Berhalter or his staff. “But we don’t really usually communicate that often. I think it’s pretty normal. I’m not sure if any of the players have really heard too much.”
Berhalter saw enough quality in Wright to give him his first three caps in the USMNT’s June camp, with a Concacaf Nations League appearance at El Salvador in addition to the friendlies against Morocco and Uruguay. His levels of both performance and mentality in a difficult European environment would seem to line up with what Berhalter says he’s seeking in his player pool.
Jun 1, 2022; Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; United States forward Haji Wright (19) reacts after scoring a goal with midfielder Weston McKennie (8) and midfielder Yunus Musah (6) in the second half against Morocco during an International friendly soccer match at TQL Stadium. Credit: Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports
“I take it as a good responsibility,” said the lanky frontrunner of the extent to which Antalyaspor attack relies on him. “I think playing with pressure shows character, and I think I enjoy the pressure and I thrive under the pressure. I also want to be the guy that’s scoring goals and getting opportunities and being the player in front of goal. Most people can tell, probably, I’m a goalscorer and I want to be involved in the goals. I appreciate the responsibility.”
His summer call-up was a reunion with former YNT and Bradenton Residency Program colleagues like Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Luca de la Torre, which helped him slot quickly into the group dynamic.
Yet Berhalter pulled Wright off at halftime of the El Salvador match and afterward said he didn’t “fully capitalize” on his “opportunity” on an “unlucky night.” Three months later he was abruptly left off the roster for the United States’ September camp despite scoring five goals in Antalyaspor’s first three matches of the season.
Even if the Yanks’ generally dismal outings versus Japan and Saudi Arabia could be said to have enhanced the reputations of those who didn’t take part, that was a sobering – and confusing – development for a well-traveled 24-year-old who seems to have done just about everything in his power to state his case for the USMNT’s troubled No. 9 job.
“As a newcomer, it’s difficult to get adjusted to a new system, to new players around you, new coach, new environment,” said Wright of his June experience. “And I think in training I tried my best to adjust, tried to show myself. And then in the minutes that I got, I did the same. Think I had a few good touches, performances. I was hoping to be a part of the September camp so that I could build on that. But of course, that didn’t happen. So now I’m just waiting to see, trying to play my best now and hoping for the best.”
The Süper Lig’s relatively low profile in the United States is probably not helping Wright, who admits he’s in the dark as to whether playing in Turkey is harming his national team chances.
“I understand in the U.S. market, I know Turkey’s not really viewed as an amazing league with amazing players that are a top level, even though it is a very high level in Turkey and there are very good teams fighting in the Champions League, fighting in Europa League, fighting in Conference League, that are doing well in those leagues,” said Wright.
“It’s difficult to say whether or not I’m on the radar or not, because I haven’t really had that much communication with the national team.”
But the league boasts a dense accumulation of talent and a fervent soccer culture that has helped bring out the best in Wright, a former U.S. youth international who labored to find stability and opportunity at previous stops in Germany and the Netherlands.
Wright with Schalke in 2017
“I like to call it life experience,” he said. “Every country that I played in, every league that I played in taught me something, and I grew as a person, as a player from that. And I think definitely if you’re able to perform in different countries, different leagues, it shows character, and that’s something I want to prove to people – that I’m not just a pushover, or a player with a bad mentality, or whatever it may be. that I can also be a top player one day, and that I also have a great mentality.
“For me, personally, it was just a matter of not being 100 percent ready,” he said of his past difficulties. “The more you play, the more you learn, especially in soccer. It’s kind of difficult to learn if you’re not playing. I just needed to get on the field and make the mistakes so that I can learn from them.
“Basically what I’ve done on my journey to where I’m at now, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But with every mistake comes a lesson, and I’ve learned from every lesson.”
It’s non-stop goals for all USMNT strikers right now
Haji Wright is keeping his name in the battle to be the U.S. men’s national team’s main option up top at the World Cup.
For the second straight match, Wright scored twice for Antalyaspor in a 5-2 result. This time though, Wright’s two goals were the only ones Antalyaspor got on the day, as Gaziantep produced a blistering four-goal second half to come from 2-1 down to win on Friday.
Still, Wright now has five goals in four league matches, putting him firmly in the Süper Lig golden boot race with Enner Valencia (who has six for Fenerbahçe). That keeps him in the mix with a red-hot corps of USMNT strikers that includes Josh Sargent and Jordan Pefok, who have been just as sharp for Norwich and Union Berlin, respectively.
Wright got his first by first through pure hard work, battling for a header as Antalyaspor broke forward. Wright didn’t win the ball, but his presence forced an errant header, and he took off into the space opened up as a result, received a through ball from Fredy, and used his defender as a screen to score a 30th minute equalizer.
Ten minutes later, Wright gave Antalyaspor the lead, again on a pass from Fredy. This time, Antalyaspor broke through with some attacking possession, and Fredy’s ball in for Wright was dummied on by Luiz Adriano, setting the USMNT striker up to tuck the ball away first-time.
The first was pretty perfunctory: a penalty that he won after being wiped out by a Trabzonspor defender. Wright dusted himself off and converted the spot kick shortly before halftime.
The second took a little more work. Deep into stoppage time, a cross found Wright in the box, surrounded by two defenders. He brought the ball down on his chest, took a second touch, but all that got him was less space to operate in, and eventually a third defender to deal with.
No problem! Wright turned away from goal, then pivoted abruptly to his right, spinning away from the entire pack of Trabonspor players before firing a low shot that clipped a defender, looping over the ‘keeper and in.
Wright is up to three goals and an assist in three games to start the season for Antalyaspor, meaning that he’s been directly involved in two-thirds of their goals.
