Romania 2-1 Poland: surely the end of the road for Jan Urban as Selekcjoner

Image via @LaczyNasPilka on X

An extremely dismal showing from Poland resulted in a 2-1 loss away to Romania in Bucharest, in what will almost certainly be the last game we see with Jan Urban in charge of the national team. 

I’d like to speak about the game, but it felt so deflating and largely boring to watch that I can’t imagine anyone would even want to read about it if, from a Polish perspective, you had to endure that. 

In any case, Poland did start the game well, but after about 15 minutes Romania had largely figured out how to get some joy by mixing up the short and long passing game, and they limited the visitors to few chances. 

Stunningly, Urban made no changes at half time and it was much the same story. Poland start the half not particularly well, but better than they ended the first 45 minutes, and then Romania again wrestle the upper hand and had a goal ruled out by VAR for a foul on Sebastian Szymański. 

Speaking of, the officials tonight were really not up to standard, from giving too many soft fouls but not all of them, to the borderline criminal decision not to produce a card when a studs-up challenge went straight into the side of Marcel Reguła’s shin with force. 

Regardless the blame for this loss is spread around much further than simply looking at the referee. A couple of simple errors meant that Romania were able to bear down on goal twice in five minutes, converting both their chances and nearly a third. Bartłomiej Drągowski did not cover himself in glory in either situation, but nor did several others from a defensive aspect. 

It was only after the first of these goals Urban made changes, Adrian Benedyczak and Bartosz Mazurek, and it was only after the second goal Poland actually started playing football properly. It culminated in a set-piece goal for Reguła, and whilst Poland had one or two opportunities after that, they could not convert any of them. 

Let’s start carving up the blame, and let’s be honest, it pretty much squarely sits at the feet of Jan Urban. I’d tried to be positive in the build-up to this game, I liked a lot of the call-ups, but he makes stupid choices with personnel. Forget the fact that Łukasz Skorupski isn’t here and he should be, but you can’t say with a straight face that Drągowski is a clearly superior goalkeeper than either Sławomir Abramowicz or Mateusz Kochalski. I mean they are all similar in terms of their quality, but if Urban wanted to include younger players here why does he pick someone who has had his chances in the years gone by and not taken it?

Now the player we’ve all scapegoated since September, Karol Świderski. He was so ineffective both with and without the ball I don’t know how you can possibly see fit to include him again on Tuesday (if Urban is still in charge), but we all know by now he is Urban’s favourite so he will be, even though Benedyczak did more in twenty minutes than Świderski did in seventy. Even pushing Szymański further forward and having Mazurek next to Nowak looked so much better than the dirge of what came before. 

Whether or not Urban will step down himself or be let go before Tuesday, which seems a little unlikely, we know that Cezary Kulesza and the PZPN are also a big obstacle to get Poland back to where they were even five years ago. We can all predict that instead of someone a bit more interesting, maybe foreign, taking charge of Poland, it’ll be Jerzy Brzęczek again and we’ll be in the same situation as we are now in another 18 months. 

This is very pessimistic of course, but there are signs that Poland can improve on this in time for their game against Sweden even if Urban is taking charge of it. Firstly, let’s drop the pretence that Świderski is this fantastic hard-worker and just put in either Benedyczak or Mazurek, even Mateusz Żukowski will be a better option. Secondly, even if it ends in tears, let’s give a different goalkeeper an opportunity. It’s time that we move on from some of these older names that are really only here because they haven’t been able to secure the starting spots when they were younger and better, but they’ve hung on long enough that they’re now getting these chances. That would certainly be the case with Drągowski you would say, and maybe a couple of the squad players too. 

Beyond any of this however, is the crushing realisation that Poland have suffered another woeful Nations League campaign, they may end up in Division C and they will now have a harder time qualifying for Euro 2028, which they won’t anyway if Urban were to still be in charge. I can’t see that he would be though. 

Urban is saying in his press conference that he won’t resign, he would have to be fired but that’s not up to him. Kulesza is nothing if not a populist, so perhaps Urban should start thinking about where he would like to spend his time away from the spotlight in the near future. 

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