Poland vs Romania preview: expected line-up and news
Tonight sees the tie that is very much being billed as a match to decide Jan Urban’s position, as Poland take on Romania at home in Warszawa.
I’m on holiday at the moment, so I haven’t been able to read the coverage of the past few days as thoroughly as usual perhaps, but it does feel a little like the manner of Poland’s performance more than the results are what is causing such speculation that this could well be the end of Urban’s tenure as Selekcjoner.
What irritates me, even if Urban hasn’t been up to scratch and Poland have gone backwards (albeit from a limited sample size) since their World Cup qualifying ended in spectacular disappointment, is that it’ll still be Cezary Kulesza presiding over the process of hiring a replacement.
I’ve been critical of Kulesza often on this website, especially when you compare his time as PZPN President to his predecessor. Granted, it could be argued Kulesza has had to deal with tougher issues and the end of what was a golden generation of Polish players, but the past four years have featured a lot of mishaps which largely had Kulesza’s fingerprints on them.
Anyway, Urban’s press conference yesterday suggests he is well aware of the pressure he is under, and wants to carry on with business as usual to the best of his abilities. For what it’s worth, I think that despite Poland’s severe shortcomings over the last two games, Urban did initially have a good period working with this squad. Unfortunately, it does feel like from the moment he made his squad announcements this international break was only going to have a negative energy.
According to Tomasz Włodarczyk, this is the most likely team we will see tonight:
I don’t really think this is a particularly great line-up, it speaks to me of a man panicking that he’s going to lose his job and is cramming people into the team on the basis of their experience rather than what they’ve actually been able to produce over the course of the last week. I’m unhappy that after good games, there is the prospect of not just Kacper Potulski having been dropped on Monday and now it looks like the same is going to happen to Mateusz Żukowski.
Regardless, Romania at home should be the least difficult fixture that Poland play in this Nations League campaign, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they make hard work of it. Fingers crossed for Urban that this cautious approach will pay off, but even if it does he shouldn’t repeat it any time soon.
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