Image via @FCBarcelona on Twitter
It’s been a fairly miserable September so far for those of us who follow Polish football, at least for the most part, and as usual an awful lot of finger-pointing is in the direction of Robert Lewandowski.
Some of this is justified, granted. We didn’t need yet more reminders about why interviews on the eve of international breaks are usually poorly timed at best and come across as pointless public slanging matches at worst, but yet Lewy provided us with a wonderful example, even if there was a grain of truth in some of the points he made.
Then of course we come to the actual football, and despite a decent enough showing and a brace against the Faroe Islands, he was routinely slaughtered in most of the analysis of the 2-0 defeat to Albania. Again, fair enough, he was far from good, but so was practically everyone else on the pitch for Poland.
I get why Lewandowski is frequently a target when Poland do poorly, because he’s the captain and there is an argument that perhaps he’s not really captain material, but that seems to be transposing a past, more selfish Lewandowski onto the current incarnation of Poland’s greatest ever player. The older he is, the more Lewandowski has been involved in team play and all the more rounded a player he has become for it.
However, there is also an argument that Lewandowski needs top quality support to be at his best, something which has rarely happened in the national team in the recent past and wasn’t happening an awful lot at Barcelona last year either. Indeed, a lack of support in those areas of the pitch where Lewy likes to operate was probably the chief reason Barca failed in European competition, but I digress.
This weekend saw Joao Felix make his first start for Barcelona, and aside from looking for all the world like the top player he once appeared destined to become, he also brought out a better Lewandowski performance than we have seen recently as well. Not to suggest Lewy has been playing badly to start the season, quite the opposite, but the game on Saturday night against Real Betis seemed so perfect for whoever the future Selekcjoner is as a lesson in how to set up. Felix came out after the game and said he had spoken with Lewandowski about providing more attacking support, and with a 5-0 win, one goal and two assists for Lewy this certainly paid dividends.
So, what were the specifics of this support? Well, actually being physically closer to Lewandowski on the pitch, but being a very different profile of forward, gives a defence a completely different set of problems to just having two traditional no.9-types. Lewy was far more able to be involved in the build-up than he has been so far this season for Barcelona, because he wasn’t the sole focal point of the attack, and obviously having the ball a lot helped.
Poland are likely to have a majority of possession during most of their remaining European qualifiers, as so far that seems to be the only thing they’ve dominated in Group E. Therefore, adapting to a similar way of playing where there is a forward with a profile different to Lewandowski lining up alongside him for the national side could be a really sharp decision.
Again, Poland do not have Joao Felix, but they do have Sebastian Szymański. His performance against Sweden in the World Cup play-off 18 months ago is arguably one of the chief reasons Poland went to the World Cup last year, as it meant Lewy wasn’t the only out ball for long periods of that game. In terms of the classic “hoof it to Lewy” way Poland have played for what feels like millennia, Euro 2020 and Paulo Sousa was probably the only example of that which would still work (and be watchable), with a large part of that being that you had Karol Świderski operating slightly deeper, almost as an attacking midfielder.
If not Szymański operating as a foil to Lewandowski, then who might be able to? Świderski and Milik can play as deeper-lying forwards, but their profiles are less like Felix and Szymański and more like Lewandowski, so I’m putting them to one side for the purpose of this thought experiment. Piotr Zieliński is perhaps more suited to controlling the game from the midfield, and if we’re going with the Barcelona analogy, think of Zielu in the Frenkie De Jong role. As frequent readers might know I’m a big fan of Kacper Kozłowski, and I think he has the talent and versatility to play back-up to either Szymański or Zieliński in this type of a system. Quite how (aside from minor injuries) Kozłowski hasn’t played for Poland since 2021 seems laughable given how much potential he has, and it’s all the more remarkable considering he doesn’t turn 20 until next month.
Of course, I could’ve written about a variety of Polish performances this past weekend. Szymański scored a winning goal for Fenerbahce, Adam Buksa scored two in the same game for the oppostion. There is a case to be made for Tymoteusz Puchacz returning to the set-up, as there is a case for Adrian Benedyczak to be called-up again next time around after his goalscoring continued at the weekend. Despite his age however, Lewandowski remains the yardstick by which we measure Polish football, and not even necessarily based on past glories. He was instrumental in Barcelona’s resurgence last season, and he will be hugely important this season as well.
Whether or not Lewandowski can continue to be important for the Polish national team really comes down to how the next Selekcjoner plans on setting the team up. Gearing it towards Lewandowski seems like a controversial statement at this moment in time, but making Lewy the focus of Poland’s play will likely make the team as a whole function in a more attacking, and therefore more watchable way.
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