The reasons for Poland’s dismal showing at the U-21 Euros

Image via @LaczyNasPilka on Twitter

It’s over a week on from Poland playing their final group game, and indeed final game, of the U-21 Euros in Slovakia. Most of us of a Polish-supporting persuasion have moved on, and put the sheer indignity that we suffered through behind us.

On the other hand, it has festered a little more for me I think. I wrote fairly briefly about the woes that befell Poland after their first two losses to Georgia and Portugal, but have not yet addressed the game against France.

Despite already being well and truly out of the tournament, I expected more from the France game. I hoped for a mirror image of the senior Euro last summer, where the final “match for honour” was against France and was indeed the best Polish performance result-wise. 

This was not forthcoming last week. What is most frustrating are the errors in decision-making, which are admittedly more common when watching any youth tournament. However if you compare Poland’s decision making to that of the teams they faced, it was objectively just so much worse.

Against France this seemed to be even more apparent. Errors of judgement in the goalkeeping actions, hesitant defensive play and often selfish when in good attacking positions, you do wonder how Poland played so well in qualifying for this tournament and so abjectly once they got there.

So what actually are the reasons behind Poland’s bleak displays at the U-21 Euro? For me, there are three big reasons which I worry could well carry over to the senior side in the coming years, although I think that is a bit fear-mongering if I’m honest. 

Firstly, we should address the goalkeeping department. Kacper Tobiasz comes in for a lot of criticism and he is often inconsistent, both for Legia Warszawa and the U-21 team. However there was little he could do for the goals conceded in the first two games, save for one of his typical mistakes, parrying into the path of an attacking player. Then when you look at the string of errors committed by Kacper Trelowski against France, you really have to despair. This is even worse when you consider that arguably one of the best Polish players of any age over the past season, Sławomir Abramowicz, was third-choice behind the two Kacpers.

What is quite worrying is that for at least the last 20 years, and longer throughout the history of Polish football, is the track record of producing goalkeepers of genuine quality. Just off the top of your head you can mention Wojciech Szczęsny and Łukasz Fabiański, with the former certainly being world-class and the latter a very good Premier League keeper for a decade or more, a Champions League winner in Jerzy Dudek and even a cult hero/serial winner in Artur Boruc.

Looking at Tobiasz and Trelowski, I don’t think there’s any real indication they will go on to reach the level of any of the above. Okay, they’re both young, but Tobiasz is realistically too inconsistent and Trelowski is untested at higher levels of European competition. I know Trelowski was the Ekstraklasa’s Young Player of the Season, but for me I think he is still a level below Abramowicz who, in my opinion, had just as good a season and played important European ties to boot.

Personally, I can’t see any of these three ending up as Poland’s No.1 at any point in the coming years. Obviously my feeling is that Abramowicz has the highest ceiling of the current U-21 goalkeepers, but even then you have goalkeepers also on the younger side like Marcin Bułka and Kamil Grabara lining up presently (or in the past) for Poland’s senior team and who will likely dominate those first and second-choice positions for the next decade. 

I’m also of the belief that Poland’s tactics really hindered them in the tournament, which brings me onto what I think was the second biggest issue for Poland, in the form of coach Adam Majewski. Before we go further I don’t think Majewski is a bad coach, but he made some real errors that should’ve been addressed after it was clear for all to see things weren’t going to plan.

If you ask me, the “sliding doors” moment that summed it all up took place the very first day of the Euros, when he was awarded a new contract before being partly (if not wholly) responsible for the substitution that lost Poland the opening game. 

Majewski could have recovered from this with a sound result against Portugal, be it a win, a draw or even a narrow loss. The fact a 5-0 pasting was handed out, with four of the goals in the first half and three occurring between the 15th minute and the half hour mark, was borderline inexcusable. 

You have to do something in that situation, when being punished on transition over and over again. Change shape, become more compact, make substitutions to halt momentum, literally anything. In the end, nothing, and by the time he acted more decisively it was too late. The same was true in the France game.

I mentioned it in my last article, but I think the back three which Poland had used so well in qualifying looked really, really out of place at the tournament proper. Now I won’t sit here and slate Majewski for sticking to what had been working, but at least try something different as and when the situation dictates.

Lastly, and I will admit this is a little harsh (but nonetheless valid), Poland just don’t have the same individual quality as the countries they faced in the last two games of the group. Now this needn’t be an issue, as Georgia ably showed by working as a collective to beat Poland in the first game, albeit a bit fortuitously. France also are perhaps more than the sum of their parts, despite having very strong individual quality in certain positions. Portugal were largely all about individual quality, especially in the shape of their wingers and Geovany Quenda in particular. 

It worries me that we may well get to a point where Poland as a footballing nation have to move on a little from where we are now, relying on supreme individual quality in the senior team and those more talented players having to carry the teams. I’m thinking pretty specifically about recent years where the senior team has relied heavily on Robert Lewandowski, Nicola Zalewski and whoever happens to be in goal. This relying on the best players was evident this past U-21 Euros too, with Mariusz Fornalczyk and Kacper Kozłowski constantly looked to as creative outlets.

This increased responsibility on the individual has not exactly been by design but out of a sense of practicality. In the senior team a truly golden generation came to an end, and those who took their places haven’t been able replicate the same showings, and this has trickled down to the U-21s.

I don’t really know how this gets reversed, other than trying to bring through another golden generation, but that’s hardly feasible in the short term. What is a more immediate concern is that a lot of Poland’s U-21s were looking to put themselves in the shop window during this tournament, and they’ve likely done more harm than good to those chances. 

Let’s cycle through some of them. Kozłowski was reportedly wanted by two of Turkey’s giants, Fenerbahce and Galatasaray, but I can’t imagine that happening now. Jakub Kałuziński has long been of interest to teams in Spain, but I doubt that would transpire solely off the back of his performances in the last two weeks. You’d have to think St. Pauli must be wondering what they’ve bought in Arkadiusz Pyrka, so ineffectual in both elements of his wing-back role and Dominik Marczuk spent more time on the opposite flank defending his own box than attacking the opposition’s, a shame given his higher level of experience and quality comparative to others in the squad.

Looking ahead there are undoubted worries, although many of the names I’ve mentioned here are still fine players and will have respectable careers, some may even surpass our expectations. 

However, you can’t help but get the feeling that given the age of the players and the current turmoil in the Polish national team set-up, it will only become a more unforgiving atmosphere in the short-term should any of these U-21s make the step up to the senior team full-time. 

I always want to leave on a note of optimism and I will say that there are a lot of players who weren’t incredible in the U-21s and have become much better, you look at senior Polish internationals like Zalewski and Krzysztof Piątek and they weren’t amazing at youth level, but either have or are in the process of carving out good or fairly notable careers.

Hopefully this is true of the current U-21 squad, and looking at some of the players who either didn’t play much like Wiktor Bogacz or weren’t involved like Jan Faberski, I think they could go on to have strong careers.

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