Zieliński’s first half against Atalanta gives us a taste of what we might see at the World Cup

Image via Mikolaj Barbanell/Shutterstock

Napoli beat Atalanta 2-1 last night at the Gewiss Stadium in Bergamo, with goals from Victor Osimhen and Eljif Elmas overpowering the advantage the home side initially gained with a precise penalty from Ademola Lookman.

With Khvicha Kvaratskhelia missing there trip up north due to a back injury it was expected that the supporting cast, including Zieliński, would need to raise their game to beat the side 2nd in the table. Whether or not the team raised their level of play in Kvaratskhelia’s absence or not, they succeeded in vanquishing their nearest competitors.

Obviously I’m here to write about Zieliński, and he was the spark of the Napoli comeback. Taking a short corner, he received the ball back from Elmas before putting a wonderful ball square onto the head of Osimhen to equalise. It was the kind of delicate delivery to the back post that we hope to see Lewandowski or Milik on the end of in Qatar, and there was plenty more optimism for fans of Poland in the rest of Zieliński’s first half performance.

The midfield three of Zieliński, Stanislav Lobotka and André-Frank Zambo Anguissa has been winning plaudits all season, and they were all to a man fantastic at receiving the ball, reliving pressure and picking the right passes (for the most part). I’m not advocating that Czesław Michniewicz should change the entire dynamic of his midfield for the World Cup, but if you could get Zieliński operating in his Napoli role with Krystian Bielik and Sebastian Szymański playing the Lobotka and Anguissa roles respectively, it would surely be a more threatening midfield than the often stale and languid midfields we saw against Holland and Wales in the recent Nations League fixtures.

It’s been exciting to see Zieliński operate at such an elite level so far this season, and given he managed to carry that over in the last international break, there is no reason he can’t do the same again at the World Cup.

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