Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Poland preview: squad news, predicted line-up and more

Image via @LaczyNasPilka on X

Poland will be looking to show that Friday’s night’s mauling of Romania was not just an aberration as they face Bosnia & Herzegovina for the second time in this international break. 

The dominant story is the absence of Robert Lewandowski, who has already returned to America. Whilst not a good look, I can’t get as exercised as some people are about it as really it’s a small matter compared to some of the other discussion points around this game. 

Wojciech Mońka has returned to the U-21s for their game today with Italy, and Lewandowski is obviously suspended, so there is no need for Jan Urban to drop anyone from the match squad. Despite this, he does appear to have a lack of options on account of Lewandowski’s enforced absence. 

We know that Mateusz Żukowski did well enough against Sweden, and Karol Świderski has been very poor both at club and international level to start this season. Urban was somewhat hesitant to outright state that there are no options on account of Lewandowski’s suspension, but Urban heavily implied that there wasn’t much point asking who would start in his place. 

It does feel like Urban is still being deliberately negative in a lot of his statements, and this is the latest in a sequence of poor word choices over these last few weeks. Everyone is rightly pointing out that this could all have been avoided by having an extra striker called-up, most obviously Karol Czubak, but regardless it would’ve been nice for Urban to try and build-up the confidence of his players rather than being negative about them and their potential again. 

The latest information regarding the probable line-up for tonight is as follows:

I cannot believe that, given what we have come to expect from Urban recently, that he will still most likely start Świderski over Marcel Reguła. Świderski is nominally a striker, and for him to not be involved with anything positive in an attacking sense during a 6-0 win is certainly concerning. Especially when you consider how much more of a threat Reguła was when he was introduced during that second half on Friday night, but we know what the overarching feeling is of this international break with Urban’s selection. 

Something else to point out in the build-up to this game is that Urban is not happy with the condition of the playing surface, and he is correct to be irritated by this from the images we’ve seen. That said, Poland have played in poor conditions before so I hope that should they not prevail tonight it will become an excuse. 

Hopefully we see a Polish performance that builds upon their second half dominance against Romania, and given it will be largely the same team the omens are cautiously optimistic. You just hope that Lewandowski’s absence is not felt too greatly and that the confidence taken from Friday will see through some of the other players. 

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