Image via Liverpool FC
I’ve had the idea to write this article for some time, as whenever you notice a Polish player coming through as a teenager or in their early twenties, there then tends to be a great level of hyperbole and subsequent disappointment that they do not mature into stars for the national team.
The player who I’ve particularly been thinking about in regard to this phenomena (which, let’s be honest, every country is guilty of) is Mateusz Musialowski. Obviously my being a Liverpool fan has led me to think of Musialowski first, but it fits all the hallmarks of what I want to talk about.
After a few pretty great moments for Liverpool’s academy, Musialowski was being talked up quite literally as Poland’s answer to Lionel Messi. While he obviously hasn’t hit those heights (and let’s be honest, is unlikely to), there’s been an increasing level of writing him off because he’s still plying his trade in youth football at 20 years old, even if he does have five goals and two assists in eight games so far this season. In my view he should be loaned out and playing senior football by now, because if you look at someone like Kacper Kozłowski, of similar age (and potentially ability too) he has benefited hugely from consistent senior football.
Speaking of Kozłowski, there is another player that we spent quite some time hyping up only to be disappointed by the fact that after Brighton bought him from Pogoń Szczecin in January 2022, he has been farmed out on loan to Belgium and Holland. Despite playing well, especially for Vitesse in the Eredivisie, articles and expectations that he is Polish football’s great big hope in a post-Lewandowski environment are creating an atmosphere which will undoubtedly lead to disappointment at various stages of his career.
This whole “next Lewandowski” tag has been a burden for several Polish players over the past decade. Dawid Kownacki has often spoken about how that expectation was a huge weight on his shoulders, and you do feel that having that sort of pressure to not just succeed but thrive is hard for some young Polish players.
In my opinion, this problem of expecting the world from younger players is multi-dimensional, because it is not only the top prospects. You look at players who excelled, albeit briefly, in the Ekstraklasa. Players like Mateusz Kowalski and Dariusz Stalmach, who moved to Italy just to play in the Primavera youth teams. Kowalski has two goals this season for Parma in the Primavera, but no-one’s talking about it like they would be if he’d scored two for Jagiellonia Białystok. Similarly, Stalmach has played here and there for AC Milan’s Primavera team but he’s hardly been turning out for them consistently since joining in summer 2022. Were he playing a bit part for his old club Górnik Zabzre, we’d likely be speaking about him in far more optimistic terms.
Arguably this is an Ekstraklasa-centric approach that some pundits take, and this happens regardless of the age of the player. It’s why we’ve been treated to some highly amusing comments regarding Patryk Klimala resigning for Śląsk Wrocław. Whichever way you look at it, it hasn’t gone well for him since leaving the Ekstraklasa three years ago and he’s ended up back there, albeit at a club currently leading the league and one which might help him reignite some kind of form. However, listen to some people talk about him and you’d think Śląsk have pulled off some great coup in signing Klimala.
It’s also notable how despite expecting the world of these young players, we’re more than happy to speculate that players who haven’t delivered on this promise might still contribute to the national team. Names like Krzysztof Piątek (who did admittedly score a brace this weekend), Kamil Jóżwiak and my old favourite Przemysław Płacheta, who don’t necessarily deserve to be in the conversation over other more promising names but are thrust in there anyway.
Then we get to the thorny issue of players who are, to a degree, coming good on young promise but are out of form or are not being picked at club level. Currently, you’d single out Jakub Kamiński in particular, but I think Jakub Kiwior and Nicola Zalewski can be counted in this category too.
Also worth mentioning is some of the reaction to Patryk Peda, after he made his debut for Poland in the last international break. Here we have someone playing in Serie C, but outshone Kiwior who plays for Arsenal in his first game, before struggling a bit in his second game. It felt like after that Moldova game everybody had collectively forgotten that Peda was a strong candidate for man of the match on his debut, and he was being written off by some pundits on the basis of a couple of mistakes.
This has been a rambling article, but I’d like to return it to the key point as I wrap up: why do we expect so much so quickly? Is it simply a sense of impatience to move on from what has been a golden generation of Polish talent, and now we’re disappointed that some of those coming through are not at the same level as the older players were at that stage? Perhaps, but to me it simply is more reflective of the modern football industry.
If I may go off on a tangent here, you see fewer and fewer late bloomers like Fabrizio Ravanelli and Jamie Vardy in football. Players with any sense of promise are immediately labelled prodigious talents, and talked up as the future of their nation in any given position. I think this mentality is one of the reasons that Poland seem to struggle with filling that left-back spot in the national team, as despite players like Tymoteusz Puchacz playing really well, we’ve moved past him and onto Bartłomiej Wdowik. There’s no doubt Wdowik is having a great season for Jagiellonia, but Puchacz is himself having a standout loan spell with Kaiserslautern and there is only an 18 month age gap between them.
This sort of thinking isn’t going away any time soon, but I’d like to encourage everyone to take a step back when we read this criticism of young players, or dish some out ourselves. Of course, it is true that some young players don’t deliver on the promise they show, but we should absolutely stop expecting every decent prospect to be a world-beater.
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