Sweden vs Poland preview: latest squad news and predicted line-up
Poland will be playing Sweden in Stockholm tonight, in a rematch of their World Cup play-off, with the away side hoping to achieve a measure of revenge. Jan Urban says that’s not in his mind, although you imagine what he says and what he feels may well be two different things.
Easier said than done however, as despite a few Swedish problems which we will get onto later, the problems for Poland seem to be ten-fold.
Firstly, Jakub Kamiński has had to leave the squad due to the injury he suffered within the first 20 minutes of Friday night’s match. He has been replaced by Oskar Pietuszewski, which is a perfectly good decision in theory.
In practice, I’m a little confused, as Jan Urban said he had agreed with Porto not to call up Pietuszewski so that he could continue to recover from an injury that has interrupted the start of his season. To suddenly do a complete u-turn on this, albeit out of necessity, does still seem a bit strange. Especially considering that there are plenty of criticisms coming the way of the national team without needing the optics of what are inconsistent statements to those on the outside. Urban gave his reasons in the presser yesterday, that Pietuszewski came off the bench for his club during the last five minutes of their game against Benfica and clearly is fit enough for that, but I still think it’s another thing that makes is look like Urban is uncertain in what he is doing.
We’ve all been reading plenty over the weekend about what role Robert Lewandowski should now have in the Poland squad, given the decline in his performances over the last few months. I’m not a fan of what seems to be the binary of whether he is in or out of the team. That said, I’m not sure if I personally would have him start tonight given Mateusz Żukowski’s physical attributes, but he could still be a fantastic option to have from the substitute’s bench or in games where you know he would not need to run with the ball over great distances.
In any case, the latest reported line-up we are likely to see for Poland tonight is this:
There’s a few bold choices here, but some obvious ones. I imagine we will see Tymoteusz Puchacz get his chance after the failed experiment of having Jakub Kiwior in that position and then the slightly odd decision of forcing Przemysław Frankowski into that role, although Urban did say he may continue at left-back.
It’s a shame in some ways to have moved on from using three centre backs just as Poland seem to be strongest in that position. Also up the other end of the pitch, it’s not controversial to say that Żukowski will start and Lewandowski will replace him after an hour or so. Wiktor Nowak seems an obvious starter as he was the best thing about Friday’s match.
A little bizarre is the fact that Oskar Pietuszewski is reportedly not a part of the match squad, given the fact he has been called up for a reason and would be of use you imagine, especially as the only true wingers left in the squad are the starters. Norbert Wojtuszek also misses out.
In the Sweden camp, Alexander Isak and Hjalmar Ekdal have left due to minor injuries, which in theory makes their team weaker. However, it was a supposedly weak Sweden side that Poland lost to in March, so this will be a very hard match in any case.
There has been the argument from some pundits that Urban should take some chances with his team selection, even if it results in a loss, than sticking with the same old tried and tested formula that we’ve seen for a while.
Something worth referencing in regard to this point is a sense of nostalgia I’ve noticed these last few days for Paulo Sousa’s Poland team, specifically the one that drew with England in late 2021. The fact that he was able to achieve this with a right-hand side of Paweł Dawidowicz and Kamil Józwiak was particularly worth praising, as with the best will in the world they have not had sustained periods of success with the national team. Granted Sousa had Lewandowski in imperious form, which helped matters, but he still achieved results just as good as any Selekcjoner who has come since and has basically just recycled the same players and tactics.
The potted history of these past four years for Poland is that even if I disagreed with a lot of what Czesław Michniewicz did, he had a distinct style of what he wanted to do, it was just outdated and limited some of the better players. Fernando Santos was ultimately clueless, and to be honest there has been little difference in effect between Michał Probierz and Jan Urban. Maybe this change in formation will foment greater identifiable positives, and for Urban’s sake I do hope this is the case.
Nevertheless, there is still the matter of tonight’s match at hand, and Poland will be hard-pressed to get a good result if things pan out similar to Friday night. Let’s hope these changes bear fruit.
For more, follow @ekstraklasaexp on X (Twitter) and @ekstraklasaexports on Instagram to know when new posts go live.
Comments