Poland's tragi-comedical national football team situation

Only a few days ahead before 2 September 2021 - the day where all the World Cup qualifications began to restart, or kickstart. Every national team is hurried to summon its best, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic that has prevented fans from fully attending games. Of course, the World Cup is a lucrative matter - no one wants to cancel it.

Yet perpetration is not that simple. In addition to having been safe enough, players must be gathered at full strength of having potential replacements. This is something Poland struggling to grapple over, somewhat darkly comical rather than a well-organised one.

So what has led to this comical misery? Every evidence leads to the head, unsurprisingly, the blame lies mostly on the PZPN, which controlled Polish football since its inception in 1919. Then, the players are also at fault to judge. In the end, the wrong philosophies are also reasons to examine Poland's tragicomical affairs since the collapse of communist rule in 1989.

To start with, we need to talk about the new coach, former 2002 World Cup player Paulo Sousa from Portugal. Back in 2002, Paulo did not play a single minute as Portugal went out of the group stage with only a win, ironically 4-0 against Poland. In 2021, in a surprising move, Sousa was hurriedly appointed as manager of the Polish side for Euro 2020. The paperwork was done just by one man: Zbigniew Boniek, current PZPN President.

The Portuguese came after PZPN ended the contract with Jerzy Brzęczek (uncle-in-law of Polish international Jakub Błaszczykowski), even when he helped Poland to qualify for the Euro 2020 (rescheduled a year later due to the pandemic). PZPN believed that the then-manager of Poland's unpopularity with supporters was the reason behind his dismissal. In fact, Jerzy's highly defensive-based tactics disabled the Polish team from performing somewhat romantically flawed attacking football, as the coach defined the biggest weakness of Poland: defence. This was explained following a disastrous 2018 FIFA World Cup held in neighbour Russia when Poland finished bottom in group H.

The problem is Paulo Sousa has no idea about the defensive crisis Poland is suffering either. Despite spending his career as a defending midfielder, he opted for attacking philosophy when he turned coach. Of course, he has had success with some clubs, but not all of them. This did follow the Portuguese to Poland - he's advocated an offensive-based strategy of 3-4-2-1 or 4-3-2-1, the Portuguese's favourite formations. With only three to four players to lie deep down to protect the net, the remaining midfielders and forwards are committed for the frontline. Hence we see Poland's ridiculous defensive organisation led them to suffer three goals in an insane 3-3 thriller over Hungary, as well as a 1-2 loss to England also rooted from the failure to mark the right man. Euro 2020 later further exposed Sousa's horrible tactical understanding: his Poland was completely outplayed by Slovakia, even got a red card for Grzegorz Krychowiak, who later blamed the defence as a reason for Poland's defeat. Poland did perform better against Spain, but not before Poland's horrible defending discipline almost resulting in a defeat had Gerard Moreno not missed the penalty. In the end, defence fragility remains an issue Sousa refused to admit, and Poland lost 2-3 to a very disciplined Sweden, ended up last, again.

Well then, if Sousa is that horrible for Poland, why do so many Poles unwilling to ask about firing the coach? Well, you already have an answer: Sousa was appointed hurriedly. Since he was appointed only a few weeks before the first 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Hungary, the Portuguese have little time to fix the team. Hence we see Polish people have a hilarious reference about the Portuguese that, "we know he is not a right man, but we have no choice except supporting him". This explains despite a lot of criticism against the Portuguese coach, the majority of Polish football fans opted to support this man to stay, not because they loved him, but they have to wonder.

And we can also look to another comical problem of Poland: wrong player. I'll take the position of goalkeeper as an example. Since the 2010s, Poland's custodian has usually been firm on the hand of Wojciech Szczęsny, a talented goalie playing for Italy's giant, Juventus. But... Szczęsny is not a relatively stable goalkeeper for the Polish team. We have seen himself made a horrendous mistake during the Euro 2012 (which Poland is one of the co-hosts) opening against Greece, by fouling Dimitris Salpingidis in the host's penalty area and ended his tournament with a red card. Lucky for him, Poland drew 1-1. Then we see the same goalkeeper with identical mental issues in the 2018 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2020: frequently mistaking or misjudging the opponents. The latter tournament is even more painful when he became the first-ever goalkeeper to score an own goal in the European Championship, in Poland's 1-2 defeat to Slovakia.

By contrast, the more experienced, veteran goalkeeper (now retired from the national team), Łukasz Fabiański, did not receive the same respect. In contrast to Szczęsny, Fabiański is more mentally stable, can read the moves of opposing players, having flexible reactions as well as capable of commanding the defence, a typical Yashin-style goalie desperately in need of Poland. He was also expected to be the starting goalkeeper when Artur Boruc retired. But an injury before Euro 2012 ruled him out of the tournament. He also did not immediately play in Euro 2016 before Szczęsny fractured with an injury following a hard 1-0 win over Northern Ireland; subsequently, Fabiański was chosen and he proved why Poland needs a custodian like him: successfully holding Germany 0-0, beating Ukraine and Switzerland with a stellar performance. Though Fabiański's journey in France ended with an unfortunate defeat to Portugal on penalties, Fabiański gained praise for his outstanding athleticism. Unfortunately, once Szczęsny recovered, Fabiański was sidelined again, only making his World Cup debut in 2018 Russia, the match against Japan that Poland won 1-0, though the win meant little as Poland was already eliminated after two agonising losses to Senegal and Colombia. Fabiański could have been used as the main goalie in Euro 2020, but he was ignored only to see a disastrous elimination for Poland.

Poland has historically had good guards on the back. Jan Tomaszewski was famous for delivering Poland's only second World Cup in 1974 by knocking England out. Tomasz Kuszczak was for a long time an entrusted reserve goalkeeper for Manchester United of Alex Ferguson. Artur Boruc produced an outstanding performance for a lacklustre Polish team in Euro 2008. Yet when Poland has the chance to improve, especially with gifted players like Robert Lewandowski, the Poles threw hopes for the wrong man to side with Lewandowski, ultimately undone everything Lewy did.

Finally, we can see the quality problem within the PZPN nowadays. PZPN has become a hub of comedians in charge of Polish football since 1989. The Poles tried with different types of managers, tactics, formations and even with different philosophies, all not ended up in the fruit. Except for the Euro 2016 in France, all of Poland's best is the group stage. This was due to radical market reforms in the country - making its football clubs somewhat unable to catch up with the new transformation. Poland has successfully rebuilt its economy - but its football league Ekstraklasa ultimately did not receive much from the benefits. The league turned professional in 2005 but remains obsolete compared to most of the former Iron Curtain.

One thing that led this to happen was widespread corruption within Polish football post-communism. Match-fixing is common in Poland since the 1990s, though it has dwindled somewhat. In 2008, a scandal erupted in Poland over cronyism and corruption. The impact was clear: Poland failed miserably in Euro 2008, the country's debut on the European stage. Attempts to curtail problems have not resulted in promising developments so far, even in 2019, a post from the New York Times revealed that one Polish club, Wisła Kraków, went to be owned by its violent hooligan supporters, before getting a lifeline from once captain of Poland, Błaszczykowski, who sought to restructure the already-in-debt home club that he made his start. Before that, there had been attempts by the Cambodian royal monarchy to buy the club through a businessman, Vanna Ly, as a way to boost Cambodia's image in the world's football (even though Cambodia has even lagged behind many Southeast Asian countries).

Often, however, that PZPN does not take enough responsibility to deal with the issues. Despite plenty of trials since 2005, only a few officials and players were punished. The light treatment has left Poland's native football in despair. Zbigniew Boniek doesn't seem to be better - he is trying to compromise, rather than executing his ambitious plans to rebuild Polish football from down to earth. His appointment of Paulo Sousa may also represent this feckless understanding - no clear strategy and lack of seeing the internal issues. Of course, this is not an isolated case: almost every former Iron Curtain team has the same problem. And Poland's case isn't the worst; it's still luckier than the likes of Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Moldova, Belarus and North Macedonia, where clubs are mismanaged and the federations are utmost corrupt to the point these national teams have lost their competitiveness. Of course, we can't compare to other former Iron Curtain nations where football is not the most popular sport like Estonia, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania and Georgia.

Yet in spite of the tragicomical crisis, Poland remains highly competitive in European football, largely attributed somewhat to the large influx of Poles abroad. This is why I refer to this ironic word. Robert Lewandowski, who is Poland's best player since the 1970s era, leads Poland throughout the 2010s. Many of the country's promising new lights have appeared from club level, even though they're still somehow misused. Poland's constant appearances in major tournaments is a declaration that Polish football has never died. But internal problems and mismanagement stay intact and it's unlikely that Poland will be better soon. We may think about Ukraine, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia and Russia - where football situations are nearly similar to that of Poland - both have passionate football teams with corrupt institutions ruling above.

The upcoming World Cup games for Poland will be against Albania, a former communist bedfellow that suffers from an even direr situation of football than that of Poland, in Warsaw. Then the Poles will have to face San Marino, the weakest team in the group. I guess if Poland can live well, then we can easily make our stakes about it. The matter lies about how far will Poland go to defeat its own ghost.