Images via @ATLUTD, @LAFC and @HoustonDynamo on Twitter
This past weekend, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to watch a variety of MLS games on what for me constituted the early hours of Sunday morning. There’s been a fair amount of noise about three recent Polish moves to the MLS, those in particular being Bartosz Slisz, Mateusz Bogusz and Sebastian Kowalczyk. Slisz has been a regular in the Polish national team for the best part of a year now, Bogusz has spoken quite openly in interviews how he hopes to feature for Poland in the near future, but Kowalczyk is a name usually absent from any discussion around the national set-up despite some decent performances in both the Ekstraklasa and the MLS for some considerable time.
Breaking down whether or not these three are in the kind of form deserving of a major tournament was my own internal task, and therefore I’ll be trying to put their club form into some kind of context and if they are the kind of players Poland might need in Germany this summer. This might now be evermore prescient given that UEFA ratified a change to the number of players allowed in squads for the Euros last Friday from 23 to 26.
Starting with Slisz, who has been a regular in Poland’s squads under Michał Probierz and his predecessor Fernando Santos. His performances for Poland and Legia Warszawa were genuinely impressive at times in the past 18 months, which has in no small part earned him this move to the MLS with Atlanta United. Slisz has so far started nine games for Atlanta, has not scored or assisted and has picked up one booking in nearly 800 minutes of football, which is pretty disciplined going for a defensive midfielder. His new club are having a pretty inauspicious but defensively solid start to the MLS season, and therefore Slisz is going somewhat under the radar despite playing perfectly well a lot of the time. That being said, Slisz has far more competition in Poland’s midfield these days that when he first broke into the national side. The return to fitness of Jakub Moder, who can play a whole host of midfield roles, not to mention the sounding out of Santiago Hezze in regards to his eligibility, makes Slisz’s place in upcoming Poland squads slightly less secure. When you also consider the surprising call-up last time round of Taras Romanczuk, it’s clear that Probierz is experimenting with defensive midfielders other than Slisz. All this being said, however, I would still expect Slisz to be part of that 26-man squad on the plane to Germany this June, barring any unforeseen issues.
Turning to Bogusz, who is by far and away the Polish MLS player garnering most of the headlines. According to Tomasz Włodarczyk, Bogusz was even wanted by Premier League side Luton Town and a few other European clubs in the January transfer window. It’s not hard to see why; he’s been performing well for a decent LAFC side with three goals in 11 eleven games, and this is all whilst adapting to a centre forward position relatively new for him. Bogusz himself has spoken about wanting to impress Probierz and a desire to be in the squad for Euro 2024, but realistically if we’re talking about the pecking order for centre forwards then he’s probably sixth of seventh down the list. Given Probierz will likely take four strikers to the tournament, by dint of simple mathematics Bogusz will miss out. It could be argued that as a forward Bogusz has a different profile to all the other striker options for Poland, so I would like to see him given a chance in a Poland shirt, but the time for experimenting is not at a major tournament which Poland only just qualified for. Hopefully Bogusz will get his chance later in the year, but I don’t see it being a reality just yet.
Kowalczyk is probably in a similar position to Bogusz at Houston Dynamo. Whenever the Dynamo play, Kowalczyk is almost always the most dynamic player (pun intended). With just the one goal in ten games his statistics are less impressive, but he also is having to adapt to a new centre forward role. Kowalczyk is an attacking midfielder by trade, but has mostly been deployed in a false nine sort of position so far this season. Given what we said about Bogusz being too far down the list of strikers, you’d imagine Kowalczyk would be waiting a while for any chance in the national team, and factoring in his age when comparing the two it’s fair to say he may never get that chance. Stranger things have happened however so whilst I wouldn’t rule out Kowalczyk moving to a top league or having a stupendous run of form, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
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