Image via @LaczyNasPilka on Twitter
This lunchtime, Fernando Santos announced who he saw fit to call-up for Poland’s games in June against Germany and Moldova. With the Germany game a friendly and slated as Jakub Błaszczykowski’s farewell match, the business of the European qualifier against Moldova was very much Santos’ focus, a point he hammered home again today.
As for said farewell for Błaszczykowski, Santos made some very odd and conflicting statements. He said he could not find room for Błasczykowski in the 25-man squad he has picked, but then suggested that he’ll get to play for 16 minutes in the match against Germany on the 16th. We can’t forget how disparaging Santos initially was about this friendly, and you imagine it will very much represent a match in which many of the players selected will feature to a lesser extent or not at all in the more important game against Moldova four days after.
Speaking of the game in Chisinau, it’ll be interesting to see what system Santos deploys. Having started rather badly with a back four in the game against Czechia in March, Santos changed to a back three for the next game against Albania which yielded a more positive result. Judging from the names Santos has seen fit to include in this squad, I imagine we will see a back three again in at least one of, if not both games Poland play next month.
Santos also spoke of making it possible for the players who haven’t been playing right up to the official start date of June 12th to report for training earlier than necessary, with this training camp unofficially starting on the 5th. In my opinion, this is a pretty solid decision as we saw how disjointed this new-look Poland played at times in the March internationals.
The first thing many people sought to point out was the two biggest names missing from this squad, namely Matty Cash and Krzysztof Piątek. Cash has only recently returned to a state of fitness for Aston Villa, and according to Tomasz Włodarczyk played the last two games of Villa’s season thanks to injections. The Polish medical staff informed Santos that calling up Cash wouldn’t be possible, and there is plenty of cover whether Santos chooses to play with traditional full-backs or wing-backs, with Tomasz Kędziora, Bartosz Beresyzński, Przemysław Frankowski and Nicola Zalewski all able to play those positions.
As for Piątek, he’s had a fairly ordinary season in Serie A and many of us expected his place to be taken back in March by Dawid Kownacki, who has had the season of his life in the 2. Bundesliga. This didn’t transpire, and Kownacki isn’t called up once again.
It’s pleasing to see a relatively large number of Ekstraklasa players included by Santos, such as Ben Lederman, Mateusz Łęgowski and Bartosz Slisz. I wouldn’t seriously expect either of the latter two to feature in the more important game against Moldova, but they may well get minutes in the friendly against Germany.
Arguably the biggest surprise inclusion in this squad, other than Slisz, is Arkadiusz Reca. To me, this is the strongest possible implication that Santos plans to play at least one of these games with wing-backs, given that is the position that Reca has most excelled at throughout his career, often struggling more when playing as a traditional full-back.
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