Image via @LaczyNasPilka on Twitter
After a fairly disappointing but predictable loss to Portugal on Saturday night, Poland will be looking to bounce back tonight against Croatia in what represents something of a “winner takes all affair” in the Nations League.
It’s not quite that cut-and-dried though, but it would leave Poland in the best possible shape heading into November’s break - a trip to play the clear favourites of the group in Portugal and then a winnable home game against Scotland, who have so far proved the whipping boys.
Before we properly preview tonight’s match with Croatia, I’d like to address some of the fallout from Saturday and some of the talking points that have emerged since. I touched upon some of these in the report I published shortly after the final whistle of that game, but obviously a great deal of this discourse started in earnest after that.
First up, it was pleasant to see that for once not everyone wanted to blame Jan Bednarek for absolutely everything. He was probably Poland’s best defender against Portugal, which doesn’t say much, but there was a moment when he thwarted a late situation where Diogo Jota was bearing down on Łukasz Skorupski’s goal which was really impressive. This was slightly cancelled out and lost in the midst of the own goal, but Bednarek still comes away with credit from the match.
We’ve also seen the talk around Maxi Oyedele come full-circle. Before, during and immediately after there was talk of Probierz getting it completely wrong, it was a pointless call-up and Oyedele shouldn’t be seen in the senior national side again. Then we had discussion that it was too much for him but we shouldn’t give up on him and he is still young. Now we’re at the point people want him to start again against Croatia to help build confidence and because Jakub Moder is the only other option, and probably not someone who could play a full 90 minutes.
To be honest, I’m sort of in the middle of these latter two opinions. Playing against Portugal was very much being thrown in the deep end and whilst he wasn’t awful he did lose confidence, with there being a marked improvement after Moder came on the pitch. Starting him again is maybe the way to go, although Moder might get the nod and understandably so. Both will get time on the pitch, but I’m not sure which will start.
Tactically there has been quite a lot of talk around the game against Portugal being the worst under Michał Probierz. I don’t know how much I agree with this given they are a top team, but Poland were better against Holland and France in the Euros and they are both better than Portugal, so as I say it’s hard to agree completely with that synopsis.
Probierz saw the need to come out swinging slightly afterwards, clearly cherry-picking a few data sets to argue that Poland were actually quite expansive at times and for that reason they weren’t defensively secure. Then, predictably, plenty of fans and pundits were able to use other data metrics to counter Probierz’s arguments.
Look, I have a bit of a background in football data analytics, and there is a certain level of cherry-picking that has to occur if you’re going to try and prove a point. That will hardly come as a shock but the old adage that “you can prove anything with statistics” is obviously true if you only use certain ones.
Quite frankly it was nothing to do with Poland being more expansive than before behind looking defensively frail, especially in transition. Large parts on this were down to individual players continuing bad runs of form in the national side, namely Przemysław Frankowski and Paweł Dawidowicz. I’d like to see other players come in for them tonight, and we probably will in the case of Frankowski, but Probierz seems to favour Dawidowicz for some reason and much as I don’t want to see him in that starting line-up there is a good chance he will be.
Finally, before we get onto the preview proper I’d like to briefly address the issue of poor atmosphere at Stadion Narodowy. When you have players coming out and speaking on a topic like this as well as the usual fan and pundit disgruntlement, it is absolutely time to pay attention. To be frank however, the football on display would likely have meant an atmosphere just as tame were it hosted elsewhere, and there does seem to be a certain inverse snobbery when it comes to discussion around atmosphere at Narodowy. An ongoing problem yes, but atmosphere in the stands tends in most cases to reflect what is on the pitch, and when you have long periods where Poland are without hope in a game having 58,000 people sound like they’re at a funeral is kind of to be expected.
If we can now properly preview tonight’s line-up, I would expect it to look something like this:
Probierz has confirmed Marcin Bułka will start in goal, and I think that is more or less fair enough. I’d like to see Kamil Piątkowski in place of Dawidowicz, and given that Sebastian Walukiewicz was sent home with illness there is the prospect of Piątkowski getting some minutes.
In midfield, Sebastian Szymański did disappoint some on Saturday. I have to say I am a bit concerned when it comes to Szymański’s performances in the national team, he’s starting to fall into the same trap as Karol Linetty: great for his club, but a complete unknown when he gets the chance he deserves for the national team. However, with Jakub Piotrowski also having left the camp due to an adductor problem, there are few who could play that box-to-box role left in the squad. Bartosz Kapustka, yes, but I can’t see him starting and whilst I appreciate the argument for moving Nicola Zalewski infield I wouldn’t be experimenting so readily tonight.
For me, Kacper Urbański is a must start and given the impact he had against Portugal I’d like to see Probierz come to the same conclusion. I’d also like to see Michael Ameyaw again, even if I think it’ll be more likely that Jakub Kamiński starts in place of Frankowski.
Like I said in the headline, plenty of pundits want to talk this game up as the “match for everything”, and I do get that angle of it - I even agree with it to an extent. However, I think most people would be happy to just see some evidence that what Poland have been poor at recently (namely defensive transitions) are being worked on and showing some signs of improvement.
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