Lithuania vs Poland preview: a potentially tricky tie for the visitors to navigate

Image via @LaczyNasPilka on Twitter

Poland will take on Lithuania tonight in Kaunas as they seek to continue the positive results earned in World Cup qualifying during Jan Urban’s first international break as Selekcjoner.

A reported 5,000 Polish fans will make the short trip to the Lithuanian capital in order to cheer on the Biało-Czerwoni, in what could be a real challenge for the away side.

In my opinion there has been a lot of pointless grandstanding about the friendly on Thursday night. Considering we are unlikely to see seven or eight of those same players start tonight (definitely not Przemysław Frankowski nor Bartłomiej Drągowski due to injury), we should take the New Zealand game with a heavy pinch of salt.

Indeed I suggested as much in yesterday’s article, and I think a lot of the reaction and general feeling of that match can be encapsulated by the verdict on Kacper Kozłowski’s performance. He was perfectly average, and in the context of playing his first Poland game for the senior side in four years, he played fine. Given the fact he is still a fairly young, talented player, some people rightly expected more from him. 

I’m not so sure that a match like Thursday’s friendly is really a fair environment to judge him upon, and this goes for several of those who played. Tonight’s game and what is at stake should really be how we adjudge those less-than-regular members of the squad. Enough about Poland though, what of the opponent?

Lithuania have actually been a lot stronger than many would’ve predicted ahead of these qualifiers back at the start of the year, as seen to great effect when it took Poland a good 80 minutes to break them down at home in March and indeed in their last home game, when they ran the Netherlands close in a 3-2 loss. 

That being said, many pundits and supporters recognise that Poland are the favourites here, none more so than Urban himself the he pointed it out in his press conference yesterday. He also hinted he was sure of his starting line-up, which according to reports and rumours may look something like this:

It doesn’t surprise me to see Michał Skóraś step into the role Nicola Zalewski has left absent through injury, given his performance against New Zealand and the have hints dropped by many. Likewise it is not overly a shock to see Karol Świderski in place of Sebastian Szymański. Szymańśki had another wholly underwhelming game for Poland on Thursday, and it seems unfortunate to suggest that sub-par national team displays may be catching up with Szymański, as has happened in previous years and with previous Selekcjoners.

I’ll be live-tweeting the match later today over on Twitter, so be sure to follow along over there.

For more, follow @ekstraklasaexp on Twitter and @ekstraklasaexports on Instagram to know when new posts go live.