Image via @FifaWorldCup on Twitter
Poland advanced through to the knockouts at the World Cup for the first time in 36 years on a nervous night in Doha as they succumbed to two second half goals from Alexis MacAllister and Julian Alvarez.
Robert Lewandowski was even more isolated in attack than he had been in the game against Mexico and Czesław Michniewicz seemed to be banking on keeping a clean sheet as a means of getting a result.
The first half did result in Poland showing at least some ambition, with some nice play down the right hand side from Matty Cash, Przemysław Frankowski and Lewy but otherwise most of the threat was non-existent, save for set-pieces and a tamely hit effort by Krystian Bielik.
Argentina were out to win from the start, and slowly ratcheted up the pressure as the half wore on. Wojciech Szczęsny was forced into a number of good saves, including one to avoid being caught out from an in-swinging corner, and five minutes before half time he was adjudged to have fouled Lionel Messi when coming deflect a cross. Szczęsny’s hand merely brushed Messi’s face, but it was given after a VAR review and most people who were not Argentina fans found that to be somewhat incongruous given the usual high bar for a penalty. However, Szczęsny is something of a penalty-saving specialist and thus he proved that again by keeping out the resulting penalty from Messi.
Unfortunately the penalty save proved to be in vain as just 90 seconds into the second half MacAllister swept home a finish off the left post after Grzegorz Krychowiak failed to track his run from midfield. Kamil Glik very nearly equalised immediately with a great header that sailed just wide of the target, and from that point onwards Poland were playing to not concede again.
Concede again they did though, as on the second goal Glik failed to stop the pass into Alvarez and Cash, Kiwior and Szczęsny were powerless to stop a wonderful finish from the young striker. They could well have been blown away were it not for more great saves from Szczęsny.
The final whistle blew and there were plenty of nervous moments as one more goal for Mexico in their game against Saudi Arabia would see them through instead of Poland, but as Mexico were pushing for the goal to send them through Saudi Arabia scored with about two minutes of stoppage time left, all but confirming Poland’s place as Group C runners-up.
Had you asked someone before the tournament whether they would have taken Poland going through in second place, I think we would all have said yes. As I think has been quite correctly pointed out on Twitter by Christopher Lash, last night’s result was positive and negative at the same time.
Michniewicz’s substitutions were quite strange as well, and there’ll be more on that in tomorrow’s article.
The good news is that Poland are not going home yet, and they play France on Sunday afternoon in their first World Cup knockout game of this century.
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