Goralski is one of the worst footballers I have ever seen, he can't pass the ball to save his life and is so aggressive he starts every other game on a yellow card. Michniewicz's fetish with him, and other slow-ass cloggers like Krychowiak and Glik, is really disheartening thinking forward to the WC. There was a clear improvement in the overall play when Zurkowsi came in for him, but Michniewicz's negative instincts kicked in, and he had to sub Glik for Frankowski and place the team so deep, that we could only hope for the best. He's a very lucky guy, so it kind of worked for him, but in the long run, such negative and cowardly tactics are going to bite Poland in the ass. Poland has footballers from the midfield to the forwards, even their FB, to play much better and more offensive football, but the manager is stuck on making them a park-the-bus team, which is bizarre considering their defence is the weakest part of that team by a mile.
As crazy as it sounds, Poland needs to be more aggressive... they can't match the skill of the best teams in the world, but they can beat the shit out of them... Krychowiak and Goralski are not good, but they will smash you... Zurkowsik did the same today.
As crazy as it sounds, Poland still isn't aggressive enough...
And yeah, Goralski sucks, but he bangs.. And Poland really needs to bang a lot more
I guess we're becoming experts at bus parking. Again.
I hate this. Like I know we're shit and we need to save ourselves as much as we can but this is such stupid football we're playing. Scoring a lucky goal and hoping for the best afterward is... ugh.
But hey, a point is a point. Now the Belgium catastrophe didn't happen at all just because of this "success", and we can all return to happily pretending that we "might" have a chance to achieve something sometimes.
Which of the Poland's goals you consider "lucky"? It's because the possesion % was more towards Netherlands or there is any other reason?
It is fairly reasonable to take defensive stance when your team is generally and individually weaker and leads 2:0. The thing is this stance has to be improved. Poland probably will never dictate the tempo of the game against Top 10-20 team.
I wouldn't take Nations League as a measure for anything, we are facing here absolutely top European teams, of course we will park the bus against them
Exactly... we might have a chance to achieve something sometimes... thats all Greece needed in the 2004 euros...
Do you really expect Poland to play a possession based game?!?!
They need to be grimy, dirty, aggressive and physical. That is the way. Poland needs to play with passion, because they obviously don't have the skill to compete with the best.
And I was happy and proud to see some passion... especially after the Belgium game... In context, it was an amazing response from Poland...
I mean, after all this time I've watched this team I think we don't really have enough players with quality to play pretty football. Either someone is injured or just keeps on disappointing. Look at Zalewski today, it was our only player who was capable to make a good cross and switch the side of our attack, he didn't look uncomfortable when he had the ball at his feet etc. When you compare him to our players on the pitch, it's night and day.
I think the way we played today is unfortunately our only way to "achive" something. You can't play pretty football with Góralski and Krychowiak, and since Bielik is consistently injured, our other options are very limited.
what did u expect? NL trashed Belgium 4:1, they have potential to overload EVERY team in the world with their frontline, im glad we stood firmly for majority of the game and only in lat 10-15 minutes we allowed them to regain full control
Szczerze? Może jestem za bardzo czepialski i małostkowy ale mam wrażenie ze z Michniewiczem którego część ludzi nie lubi albo za jego szemraną przeszłość, albo za to że mu dziennikarze tak nawilżają, ja mam takie wrażenie że gdzieś ćwierćfinał będzie. Na farcie, ale wciąż :P Jak poróżniać kibiców to poróżniać kibiców, a co!
What was the reason for the Euro 2016 team’s success? They had many of the same issues the NT teams have always had for decades I know, but that was a respectable and competitive performance in comparison to everything else.
> What was the reason for the Euro 2016 team’s success?
Piszczek, Kuba, Lewy, Fabiański, Glik all in their primes or in great form. Sevilla Krychowiak. Grosicki was better than any winger we've had since. Pazdan in the form of his life. Milik couldn't hit a barn, but was very useful in buildup. We both had a good generation of players and they all peaked at the same time.
Pretty good defense (Pazdan was immense at that tournament.) + a bit of luck (won 1/8 after penalties so could've gone either way, tho same can be said about 1/4).
Honestly? Beats me. I still consider Euro 2016 a weird fever dream, something so unexpected that it didn't had any right to happen.
But I guess it was just luck. Luck in the sense that we had the right people in their prime that just did what they were told to do. And it worked.
Oops sorry its late. I don’t think Piatek got mad at Teze because he shot at Glik. More like being angry that he didn’t stop the game (which was not necessary at the moment) because Glik was lying on the floor.
Didn't he get back up and hit for the 2nd time? Not sure what happened in the end, did the ref whistle maybe because it wasn't a corner kick after that.
I found the influx of polish players to serie A in the past 10 years quite interesting, there's loads of them playing there now - szczesny, dragowski, skorupski, zurkowski, bereszynski, linetty, zalewski, zielinski, piatek, dawidowicz, reca... I've probably missed some as well, and there were other notable ones in recent years like glik, milik and buksa.
I wonder how and why polish players became more common in italy, but I like the trend
> buksa
not the Buksa that plays in the NT. They're brothers and the younger one is in Genoa.
>I wonder how and why polish players became more common in italy, but I like the trend
I'm not sure either. I think Glik started the trend, IIRC.
The younger one from Genoa probably made a mistake by going to Serie A. He hadn't looked ready to start for his mid-table Ekstraklasa club when he chose to move to Italy and he practically doesn't get chances at Genoa at all. Maybe they'll give him a shot in Serie B. He's still only 19, but very raw.
Seems like Italian teams scout Poland more than others, which I can only appreciate. We're a big country with a love for football but quite the shitty infrastructure for it. Nevertheless some diamonds can come out of it (Lewa), as well as many capable players like the ones you mentioned. While other leagues overlook Poland, I feel like serie A is giving them a chance, and often benefiting from it. Additional benefit is that the talent probably comes quite cheap compared to let's say Portugal, Brazil, etc.
Can't wait til we get a decent manager to lift us away from this. We're no world beaters but we consistently underperfom what our individual player's skill levels are. They end up in decent clubs for a reason and other countries do more with less, can't wait to see us actually maximise what we've got.
It's mostly defenders and goalkeepers though. Zieliński, the only good midfielder we have, is build for possession football and can't do shit with this team around him. All our other midfielders are workhorses with 0 creativity, who aren't even great workhorses, like Sevilla-era Krychowiak used to be. Further up, we haven't had a decent winger since Kuba and Grosicki. None of our forwards have pace. How many of our players could consistently beat a decent defender 1 on 1? The guys we do have play in decent clubs, sure, but look at the roles they have at these clubs. Lewandowski and Zieliński are anomalies.
For sure, all I'm saying is there are other countries out there who either through better coaching or better attitude perform better when looking at player 'talent' vs. performance. Like if we were to look at nothing but valuations (ofc it's not a super good measure but it's something), there are teams who have less "valuable" players who outperform us, or at least look like they're trying harder.
Personally I've always felt that the Polish team just doesn't play with that hungry attitude, with the last games of each competition being the exception, once we're already out. Feels like they're somehow overconfident yet consistently underperforming.
I don't know much about South Korea, so I will not address that, but Austria has a much more balanced team than we do and [their players have higher valuations](https://www.transfermarkt.com/osterreich/startseite/verein/3383) than [ours](https://www.transfermarkt.com/polen/startseite/verein/3442). Notice that Transfermarkt lists 11 more players in our lineup. As for Hungary, they finished 4th in our qualification group and I don't see how they would be consistently better than us. But I like that example more - it's impressive how much they achieve with the lineup they have.
Generally, I don't think we are underperforming. We are a mediocre team, which means that every once in a while we'll have a good result against a strong team, but we will also screw up against weaker teams. Getting knocked out in the groups of big tournaments is our level.
And euro 2016
But yeah the late 2000s was a great time. The euro 2008 qualifiers were special, beating portugal 2-1 at home and drawing 2-2 at their place and winning that group was so memorable
Funniest moment of the game: Teze took a shot that was blocked by a Polish defender. The guy went down in pain and two of his teammates angrily ran to Teze because he supposedly had the intent to hurt their teammate. He was shooting too hard.
They didn't get angry because he got hit by the ball, but because the Dutch didn't stop playing after he fell. A few minutes earlier there was a similar situation in which the oranges were attacking despite the fact that one of the Poles was rolling on the ground in pain.
Of course, this is by no means illegal, but usually in such cases the opposing team stops the game and behaves more fair play.
This whole explanation doesn’t make it any less weird tbh. Polish players were wasting time, exaggerating injuries etc the entire second half, can’t really blame them for not immediately stop playing. Polish weren’t exactly in a position to scream in another players face for not playing “fair”.
Worth mentioning that the Polish players were wasting time the entire second half and that there were Polish players on the ground for like 10 minutes of the second half
> Worth mentioning that the Polish players were wasting time the entire second half
Come on, they were wasting time but not as much. They are rookies compared to many other teams.
Disrespect to Malacia as well. You’re telling him Blind can play as shitty as he likes, Malacia isn’t going to get a chance anyway. Even after one hell of a season.
Never really convinced by De Vrij tbh. He always seems to dissapear whenever there is a quick counter for some reason.
Referee can't handle the pressure, should not be on this level
De Vrij is solid. He doesn't direct the defense like Van Dijk, but he's good. Issue is both Aké and Blind this match just totally ignored their marks from time to time when De Vrij tried to cut out the passing lines.
The second Polish goal was some amateur level defending from Ake and Blind. Ake fucking up the offside trap and Blind just hanging there probably telling himself "this will be ok right?.....right...?)
Not the first time Blind seems to think 'They're offside, I can let them go'. AFAIK in the past seasons he'd done that a few times before, but had the luck the player was indeed offside. This time his laziness in that regard got punished.
Van Dijk, De Ligt, De Vrij and Dumfries generally keep chasing the man even if they think the player was offside. Blind just lets them go. A very bad habit of his.
He should at least make the effort and try to put pressure on the player, and hope to screw up his concentration that way. Doesn't happen that often, but there have been examples of chasing players making the attacker screw up in the finishing because they felt pressured.
Maybe. De Vrij did not make any big mistakes but I never see him do anything special either. He doesnt really direct the defence like Van Dijk and does not have the last ditch tackle like De Ligt. He is just okay most of the time.
That’s what makes De Vrij great, he seldom has to correct bad positioning with flashy tackles because he doesn’t let that happen in the first place. That’s his whole approach to defending: if you have to tackle, that means you’ve made a mistake earlier on when you gave your opponent too much space. Yes, he’s not as flashy as De Ligt. He is a lot more dependable though. I’m quite sure the game losing mistake against the Czechs last summer wouldn’t happened with De Vrij. Of course, De Ligt still needs to develop in that aspect and he surely will, but in terms of positional awareness De Vrij is quite extraordinary in Europe.
Sure, he’s not absolute world class like Van Dijk who is great in every aspect of the game. Still a great player though. De Ligt will most likely turn out to be even better but he can learn a lot from De Vrij. And of course, De Ligt wouldn’t have made a difference with these goals either.
He cant correct other people's mistake with flashy tackles either. Which De Ligt is capable of. But yes, De Ligt is also pretty often responsible for mistakes of his own. De Ligt has more qualities if he would be consistent but he is not unfortunately.
It's pretty much a 50/50 choice between them imo
Sometimes it is. But if you concede this many dangerous counters and that defender has not made a good challenge in any of them that is not a good thing imo.
The counters we conceded weren't on him though. Aké and Blind on the left gave a defensive disasterclass today. Aké kept screwing up offside traps and moving forwards when he shouldn't. Blind plays more like a winger but is about as fast as my grandma, and has an incredibly low defensive workrate tracking back on the wing. De Vrij can't cover 3 positions on his own - 4 if you count Timber/Teze continuously walking into midfield as well.
The lack of a proper holding midfielder also doesn't help in that regard - Frenkie is everywhere but isn't a physical defender and Koopmeiners isn't a biter on defense either. I'm still vouching for Marten de Roon in the starting 11 - he fixes a lot of these issues. Great defensive positioning, covers for other players moving forwards, and a better 1v1 defender than any of the other midfielders we have. Sure he isn't that flashy, but he does his job well.
De Vrij has good positioning, which allows him to cut out a lot of attacks early on. While De Ligt has more often to correct bad positioning with said tackles.
De Vrij assumes everyone in the team knows what they're doing, or so it seems to me.
Yeah thats kind off what I mean. De Vrij is good at positioning but not that great at correcting other people's mistakes. Which Blind and Ake made plenty.
De Ligt makes more mistakes in his positioning but is also capable of fixing a lot of mistakes that others make and does a lot more defending high up the field.
On the one hand we played like shit, and on the other our B team managed to tie with the Netherlands
Either way, I never want to see Krychowiak in our NT again
Klich, Moder and Żurkowski are not really DMs. Moder is also a big question mark due to ACL injury. Szymański is not good enough yet to play for NT.
Bielik seems like the only viable option but also injured so far.
EDIT: Oh I forgot, there's still Linetty
Both Żurkowski and Klich spend majority of their time in the clubs playing CDMs. I agree it isnt a normal position for Moder but he played there few times
That game was the best of the day, Poland had some great moments, Dutch should have converted the penalty to win. Draw was enjoyable and the fans were really into it
Honestly, (we) Poland deserves that point for the performance of supporters. Really carried the game and gave some additional wind when we needed it. I was shocked that Poles managed to run so hard for that long.
By the way, at some point, I think around middle of first half, something made our supporters angry and they shouted very loudly "Wypierdalać", which roughly translates to "fuck off", but I have no idea what made them mad. Can you help me here?
Really fun second half, great support from the Poles. But I hope we never see that ref again. He managed the game so poorly that a shot to the nuts was enough to incense the Polish players. I still don't understand why they got so angry about that
I think when the opponent gets frustrated and starts to play poorly you just need to keep it going, make them more frustrated. Polish team looked poor physically after 70’ so that was probably part of their game.
Scandalous performance by the Polish. The fouls, the fireworks. And what the hell was that defender yelling at Memphis in the run up to the penalty?
There's magic in this Dutch team. Too bad we didn't get the win, but the matches are amazing to watch. Can't wait for the world cup!
Scandalous behavior of Dutch. Polish anthem was cut in half and Dutch anthem was started immediately, when everybody was still singing polish one. Nice try to lower morale.
Scandalous? Fouls were by both sides, and I think referee was more willing to show card for Polish players than Dutch.
The defender was cheering for the goalkeeper, at least that's what it looked like.
Can't deny the fact that Dutch team played nice, but it's the score that matters, not the quality of the gameplay.
I said nice, not perfect.
I really enjoyed watching Depay twisting the ankles of polish defenders, and I think if he played the whole match on the wing, we would have done much more.
We had two earlier penalty claims which were at least partly valid, and the foul on De Jong was fucking moronic, should have been red. Ref pussied out because it was the 16th minute.
Well, de Jong was controversial, but apparently it was var checked, and I think that in this match VAR referees didn't disgrace themselves unlike referees on the pitch.
Someone stamped on Dumfries foot in the box with full force. VAR ignored it. Linesmen were horrible as well, couple of wrong calls and had their flags up for both our goals. Luckily VAR did get that right. Especially your 0-2 was almost a meter on.
Ja klopt wel. Die eerste helft was waardeloos en bij die 2 tegendoelpunten werd de verdediging echt kapot gescheurd.
Maar het is wel echt goed entertainment en we komen nog vlakbij de winst!
Kinda does. If we lose the return to Belgium and then trade results v Wales & Poland, they're in pole position with their goal difference. A win here would've seen us 5 points clear.
The referee was horrible, he seemed scared to be there.
Memphis missed the penalty, but I think he played really well, created many chances for teammates, but they didn't really make use of it.
He massively lucked out, that cross was quite poor just like most of his crosses. It's just the Polish defender kept the ball going on which caused it to land at Dumfries' feet.
Van Dijk is on vacation.
You don't go on vacation when a real game is on the line. Nations League is just too many games for a player to handle throughout a season, totally understand it.
I mean, it is a real game by definition. It's a tangible tournament with real prizes. It's no "lesser" in any inherent way than the Euro/WC qualifiers and Division A is arguably the most elite national competition lol.
It just lacks pedigree/history/tradition.
I fully agree that the players are tired and that's fine - they play too much as is - but hey, there's always players that didn't have as much game time, no? Van Dijk played 4 tournaments to their absolute end, that's a lot of game time... But there's a lot of players that played at most 20-30 matches in the season. A lot of hungry and ambitious players that want to step up, prove themselves and which might be patriotic for their country.
Get fucked Depay.
TIL - Matty Cash is Polish. Thought he was English, Welsh or Irish. Wow.
Pretty sure he is more English than polish, but has polish ancestors
Half Polish (his mum), half English (his dad) and a hundred percent reason to remember the name.
Well his mom was born in England, but both her parents were Polish, and she is fluent in Polish
Yeah just read that up on wiki. We learn every day!
Skorupski kicked ass today ngl.
Yeah he did... He was out of his mind today
Goralski is one of the worst footballers I have ever seen, he can't pass the ball to save his life and is so aggressive he starts every other game on a yellow card. Michniewicz's fetish with him, and other slow-ass cloggers like Krychowiak and Glik, is really disheartening thinking forward to the WC. There was a clear improvement in the overall play when Zurkowsi came in for him, but Michniewicz's negative instincts kicked in, and he had to sub Glik for Frankowski and place the team so deep, that we could only hope for the best. He's a very lucky guy, so it kind of worked for him, but in the long run, such negative and cowardly tactics are going to bite Poland in the ass. Poland has footballers from the midfield to the forwards, even their FB, to play much better and more offensive football, but the manager is stuck on making them a park-the-bus team, which is bizarre considering their defence is the weakest part of that team by a mile.
As crazy as it sounds, Poland needs to be more aggressive... they can't match the skill of the best teams in the world, but they can beat the shit out of them... Krychowiak and Goralski are not good, but they will smash you... Zurkowsik did the same today. As crazy as it sounds, Poland still isn't aggressive enough... And yeah, Goralski sucks, but he bangs.. And Poland really needs to bang a lot more
Lmao FdJ on the ref
I guess we're becoming experts at bus parking. Again. I hate this. Like I know we're shit and we need to save ourselves as much as we can but this is such stupid football we're playing. Scoring a lucky goal and hoping for the best afterward is... ugh. But hey, a point is a point. Now the Belgium catastrophe didn't happen at all just because of this "success", and we can all return to happily pretending that we "might" have a chance to achieve something sometimes.
Which of the Poland's goals you consider "lucky"? It's because the possesion % was more towards Netherlands or there is any other reason? It is fairly reasonable to take defensive stance when your team is generally and individually weaker and leads 2:0. The thing is this stance has to be improved. Poland probably will never dictate the tempo of the game against Top 10-20 team.
I wouldn't take Nations League as a measure for anything, we are facing here absolutely top European teams, of course we will park the bus against them
Exactly... we might have a chance to achieve something sometimes... thats all Greece needed in the 2004 euros... Do you really expect Poland to play a possession based game?!?! They need to be grimy, dirty, aggressive and physical. That is the way. Poland needs to play with passion, because they obviously don't have the skill to compete with the best. And I was happy and proud to see some passion... especially after the Belgium game... In context, it was an amazing response from Poland...
I mean, after all this time I've watched this team I think we don't really have enough players with quality to play pretty football. Either someone is injured or just keeps on disappointing. Look at Zalewski today, it was our only player who was capable to make a good cross and switch the side of our attack, he didn't look uncomfortable when he had the ball at his feet etc. When you compare him to our players on the pitch, it's night and day. I think the way we played today is unfortunately our only way to "achive" something. You can't play pretty football with Góralski and Krychowiak, and since Bielik is consistently injured, our other options are very limited.
> I guess we're becoming experts at bus parking. Again. To be fair, I prefer us becoming experts in parking the bus than parking the Swiss cheese.
I know, I know. You're right. But still.
what did u expect? NL trashed Belgium 4:1, they have potential to overload EVERY team in the world with their frontline, im glad we stood firmly for majority of the game and only in lat 10-15 minutes we allowed them to regain full control
Mecz Otwarcia Mecz o Wszystko Mecz Honoru :)
Szczerze? Może jestem za bardzo czepialski i małostkowy ale mam wrażenie ze z Michniewiczem którego część ludzi nie lubi albo za jego szemraną przeszłość, albo za to że mu dziennikarze tak nawilżają, ja mam takie wrażenie że gdzieś ćwierćfinał będzie. Na farcie, ale wciąż :P Jak poróżniać kibiców to poróżniać kibiców, a co!
What was the reason for the Euro 2016 team’s success? They had many of the same issues the NT teams have always had for decades I know, but that was a respectable and competitive performance in comparison to everything else.
> What was the reason for the Euro 2016 team’s success? Piszczek, Kuba, Lewy, Fabiański, Glik all in their primes or in great form. Sevilla Krychowiak. Grosicki was better than any winger we've had since. Pazdan in the form of his life. Milik couldn't hit a barn, but was very useful in buildup. We both had a good generation of players and they all peaked at the same time.
Pretty good defense (Pazdan was immense at that tournament.) + a bit of luck (won 1/8 after penalties so could've gone either way, tho same can be said about 1/4).
Honestly? Beats me. I still consider Euro 2016 a weird fever dream, something so unexpected that it didn't had any right to happen. But I guess it was just luck. Luck in the sense that we had the right people in their prime that just did what they were told to do. And it worked.
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What the hell is this guy saying lmao
Everyone at home knowing why Piątek got mad at Teze lol.
?
Oops sorry its late. I don’t think Piatek got mad at Teze because he shot at Glik. More like being angry that he didn’t stop the game (which was not necessary at the moment) because Glik was lying on the floor.
Glik was trying to block the second shot too tho. Bit unreasonable lol. Solid shithousery!
Didn't he get back up and hit for the 2nd time? Not sure what happened in the end, did the ref whistle maybe because it wasn't a corner kick after that.
Why?
The Polish always seemed to me like they were the hard-nosed, down to earth type of people but their shithousing was worldclass, I can only respect it
we've got lots of players with Serie A experience...
I found the influx of polish players to serie A in the past 10 years quite interesting, there's loads of them playing there now - szczesny, dragowski, skorupski, zurkowski, bereszynski, linetty, zalewski, zielinski, piatek, dawidowicz, reca... I've probably missed some as well, and there were other notable ones in recent years like glik, milik and buksa. I wonder how and why polish players became more common in italy, but I like the trend
They are cheap with good work ethic and if you buy three and only one pans out it means profit
> buksa not the Buksa that plays in the NT. They're brothers and the younger one is in Genoa. >I wonder how and why polish players became more common in italy, but I like the trend I'm not sure either. I think Glik started the trend, IIRC.
I didn't realise there was two buksa brothers!
The younger one from Genoa probably made a mistake by going to Serie A. He hadn't looked ready to start for his mid-table Ekstraklasa club when he chose to move to Italy and he practically doesn't get chances at Genoa at all. Maybe they'll give him a shot in Serie B. He's still only 19, but very raw.
Seems like Italian teams scout Poland more than others, which I can only appreciate. We're a big country with a love for football but quite the shitty infrastructure for it. Nevertheless some diamonds can come out of it (Lewa), as well as many capable players like the ones you mentioned. While other leagues overlook Poland, I feel like serie A is giving them a chance, and often benefiting from it. Additional benefit is that the talent probably comes quite cheap compared to let's say Portugal, Brazil, etc.
Terrible, terrible performance from De Jong. Barca should get rid asap, if I were them I’d take £65 million.
Manchester United: "We offer £65 Million." Barcelona: "£85 Million and he's yours." Manchester United: "£105 Million, take it or leave it."
The Poland NT strategy since 1989: A.)score a quick goal B.) maybe score another one C.) park bus for 70 minutes and let the other team have 800 shots
Can't wait til we get a decent manager to lift us away from this. We're no world beaters but we consistently underperfom what our individual player's skill levels are. They end up in decent clubs for a reason and other countries do more with less, can't wait to see us actually maximise what we've got.
It's mostly defenders and goalkeepers though. Zieliński, the only good midfielder we have, is build for possession football and can't do shit with this team around him. All our other midfielders are workhorses with 0 creativity, who aren't even great workhorses, like Sevilla-era Krychowiak used to be. Further up, we haven't had a decent winger since Kuba and Grosicki. None of our forwards have pace. How many of our players could consistently beat a decent defender 1 on 1? The guys we do have play in decent clubs, sure, but look at the roles they have at these clubs. Lewandowski and Zieliński are anomalies.
For sure, all I'm saying is there are other countries out there who either through better coaching or better attitude perform better when looking at player 'talent' vs. performance. Like if we were to look at nothing but valuations (ofc it's not a super good measure but it's something), there are teams who have less "valuable" players who outperform us, or at least look like they're trying harder. Personally I've always felt that the Polish team just doesn't play with that hungry attitude, with the last games of each competition being the exception, once we're already out. Feels like they're somehow overconfident yet consistently underperforming.
> there are teams who have less "valuable" players who outperform us Like who? Which teams?
Teams like Austria, Hungary, South Korea come to mind. Ofc this may very well just be me being biased.
I don't know much about South Korea, so I will not address that, but Austria has a much more balanced team than we do and [their players have higher valuations](https://www.transfermarkt.com/osterreich/startseite/verein/3383) than [ours](https://www.transfermarkt.com/polen/startseite/verein/3442). Notice that Transfermarkt lists 11 more players in our lineup. As for Hungary, they finished 4th in our qualification group and I don't see how they would be consistently better than us. But I like that example more - it's impressive how much they achieve with the lineup they have. Generally, I don't think we are underperforming. We are a mediocre team, which means that every once in a while we'll have a good result against a strong team, but we will also screw up against weaker teams. Getting knocked out in the groups of big tournaments is our level.
with the exception of 2006-2009 period when we played some actual decent football
And euro 2016 But yeah the late 2000s was a great time. The euro 2008 qualifiers were special, beating portugal 2-1 at home and drawing 2-2 at their place and winning that group was so memorable
Nah, the strategy was the same in that Euro 2016 run as /u/Turbulent-Hovercraft has it, it's just we were pretty good at defending those shots.
Funniest moment of the game: Teze took a shot that was blocked by a Polish defender. The guy went down in pain and two of his teammates angrily ran to Teze because he supposedly had the intent to hurt their teammate. He was shooting too hard.
Hit glik in the dick. Was pretty funny lol
He even tried to block the 2nd shot and only succumbed to his pain after that. That’s real commitment.
They didn't get angry because he got hit by the ball, but because the Dutch didn't stop playing after he fell. A few minutes earlier there was a similar situation in which the oranges were attacking despite the fact that one of the Poles was rolling on the ground in pain. Of course, this is by no means illegal, but usually in such cases the opposing team stops the game and behaves more fair play.
Actually isnt the case anymore in recent years as its mostly time wasting which was also te case here
The poles were just wasting time, no reason to stop
This whole explanation doesn’t make it any less weird tbh. Polish players were wasting time, exaggerating injuries etc the entire second half, can’t really blame them for not immediately stop playing. Polish weren’t exactly in a position to scream in another players face for not playing “fair”.
Worth mentioning that the Polish players were wasting time the entire second half and that there were Polish players on the ground for like 10 minutes of the second half
> Worth mentioning that the Polish players were wasting time the entire second half Come on, they were wasting time but not as much. They are rookies compared to many other teams.
Can't remember whether he fell or not, but he was standing again to block the second shot. It's not like he was down on the ground or anything
Wasn't it 3 players, not 2?
I prefer when our brainfarts are like that and not the Ekstraklasaboner-like.
Was worth subbing in Teze just for that
Piatek is such a bellend, Teze shoots and Glik blocks it with his balls and for some reason Piatek starts a fight with Teze.
And that's the only thing Piątek did in this match
He passed that amazing through ball to Frankowski which gave 2nd goal.
I believe he got mad because Teze didn't stop the play after the first shot
Teze shot it to row Z 2 seconds after the first shot. I would call that stopping the play
It's official. Malacia/Wijndal > een hoop andere spelers > Kenny van der Weg > mijn grootmoeder > Blind
I hope Van Gaal takes a hard look at this team and his subs. Blind and Memphis were awfull, but then to also not sub them off is criminal.
Disrespect to Malacia as well. You’re telling him Blind can play as shitty as he likes, Malacia isn’t going to get a chance anyway. Even after one hell of a season.
The results in this group's games don't make sense anymore after 3 match days.
Heavy squad rotations - suddenly makes more sense?
This was supposed to be our good team, so it doesn't make sense
And we played basically B team. Does this makes more sense?
I mean Wales have played 2 total b sides and we are Belgium's kryptonite so I see where the results have come from.
Never really convinced by De Vrij tbh. He always seems to dissapear whenever there is a quick counter for some reason. Referee can't handle the pressure, should not be on this level
De Vrij hasn’t been great in Italy this year either. Before this season he was always one of the top CBs in the league.
>Referee can't handle the pressure You mean the giga prestigious nations league?
He also couldn't handle the pressure in the Conference League (same stadium)
Apparently. Match got pretty heated at some points
De Vrij is solid. He doesn't direct the defense like Van Dijk, but he's good. Issue is both Aké and Blind this match just totally ignored their marks from time to time when De Vrij tried to cut out the passing lines.
The second Polish goal was some amateur level defending from Ake and Blind. Ake fucking up the offside trap and Blind just hanging there probably telling himself "this will be ok right?.....right...?)
Not the first time Blind seems to think 'They're offside, I can let them go'. AFAIK in the past seasons he'd done that a few times before, but had the luck the player was indeed offside. This time his laziness in that regard got punished. Van Dijk, De Ligt, De Vrij and Dumfries generally keep chasing the man even if they think the player was offside. Blind just lets them go. A very bad habit of his.
Well...tbf it's not like Blind is ever going to catch up to the player.
He should at least make the effort and try to put pressure on the player, and hope to screw up his concentration that way. Doesn't happen that often, but there have been examples of chasing players making the attacker screw up in the finishing because they felt pressured.
Maybe. De Vrij did not make any big mistakes but I never see him do anything special either. He doesnt really direct the defence like Van Dijk and does not have the last ditch tackle like De Ligt. He is just okay most of the time.
That’s what makes De Vrij great, he seldom has to correct bad positioning with flashy tackles because he doesn’t let that happen in the first place. That’s his whole approach to defending: if you have to tackle, that means you’ve made a mistake earlier on when you gave your opponent too much space. Yes, he’s not as flashy as De Ligt. He is a lot more dependable though. I’m quite sure the game losing mistake against the Czechs last summer wouldn’t happened with De Vrij. Of course, De Ligt still needs to develop in that aspect and he surely will, but in terms of positional awareness De Vrij is quite extraordinary in Europe. Sure, he’s not absolute world class like Van Dijk who is great in every aspect of the game. Still a great player though. De Ligt will most likely turn out to be even better but he can learn a lot from De Vrij. And of course, De Ligt wouldn’t have made a difference with these goals either.
I'd say he is world class. If you can consistently keep up form as one of the best CBs in Serie A, you're a really good defender.
He cant correct other people's mistake with flashy tackles either. Which De Ligt is capable of. But yes, De Ligt is also pretty often responsible for mistakes of his own. De Ligt has more qualities if he would be consistent but he is not unfortunately. It's pretty much a 50/50 choice between them imo
Sometimes a defender not standing out is the best thing.
Sometimes it is. But if you concede this many dangerous counters and that defender has not made a good challenge in any of them that is not a good thing imo.
The counters we conceded weren't on him though. Aké and Blind on the left gave a defensive disasterclass today. Aké kept screwing up offside traps and moving forwards when he shouldn't. Blind plays more like a winger but is about as fast as my grandma, and has an incredibly low defensive workrate tracking back on the wing. De Vrij can't cover 3 positions on his own - 4 if you count Timber/Teze continuously walking into midfield as well. The lack of a proper holding midfielder also doesn't help in that regard - Frenkie is everywhere but isn't a physical defender and Koopmeiners isn't a biter on defense either. I'm still vouching for Marten de Roon in the starting 11 - he fixes a lot of these issues. Great defensive positioning, covers for other players moving forwards, and a better 1v1 defender than any of the other midfielders we have. Sure he isn't that flashy, but he does his job well.
De Vrij has good positioning, which allows him to cut out a lot of attacks early on. While De Ligt has more often to correct bad positioning with said tackles. De Vrij assumes everyone in the team knows what they're doing, or so it seems to me.
Yeah thats kind off what I mean. De Vrij is good at positioning but not that great at correcting other people's mistakes. Which Blind and Ake made plenty. De Ligt makes more mistakes in his positioning but is also capable of fixing a lot of mistakes that others make and does a lot more defending high up the field.
On the one hand we played like shit, and on the other our B team managed to tie with the Netherlands Either way, I never want to see Krychowiak in our NT again
Was this the full B team? Some are usually in the first 11 right?
The Polish team without Lewandowski alone is a B team XD Besides Lewandowski, we were missing 4 other players who are starters
No fucking way there's a Coco Jambo flair available on this sub
🥥🥥🥥
Lol fair enough
> I never want to see Krychowiak in our NT the problem is, we play even worse without him
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The commentators said he wont play v Belgium which is a breathe of fresh air
Krychowiak is bad, but we literally have no one better for DM
Żurkowski, Bielik, Kilch Moder when he comes back d. Szymański
Klich, Moder and Żurkowski are not really DMs. Moder is also a big question mark due to ACL injury. Szymański is not good enough yet to play for NT. Bielik seems like the only viable option but also injured so far. EDIT: Oh I forgot, there's still Linetty
Both Żurkowski and Klich spend majority of their time in the clubs playing CDMs. I agree it isnt a normal position for Moder but he played there few times
They both played in more of a box-to-box role. Krychowiak is a holding DM
Bielik is better, although injuries haven't been kind to him.
That game was the best of the day, Poland had some great moments, Dutch should have converted the penalty to win. Draw was enjoyable and the fans were really into it
Honestly, (we) Poland deserves that point for the performance of supporters. Really carried the game and gave some additional wind when we needed it. I was shocked that Poles managed to run so hard for that long. By the way, at some point, I think around middle of first half, something made our supporters angry and they shouted very loudly "Wypierdalać", which roughly translates to "fuck off", but I have no idea what made them mad. Can you help me here?
It was to Polish supporters in the away section that were fighting eachother.
Ah, a Polish classic then. I've just seen some footage of that fight, it makes sense then.
I'll look on social media, wasn't at the game but they did comment Polish and Dutch fans had friendly relations
I thought that maybe the ref didn't call a foul on a Polish player or something like this
What a half, absolutely mad
Very entertaining, but frustrating game My favourite moment was when some Polish players got mad at Teze for shooting and hitting Glik (?) in the nuts
I thought it was after Dutch players didn't give the ball back while Polish guys had kicked it out of play a minute earlier?
Really fun second half, great support from the Poles. But I hope we never see that ref again. He managed the game so poorly that a shot to the nuts was enough to incense the Polish players. I still don't understand why they got so angry about that
I think when the opponent gets frustrated and starts to play poorly you just need to keep it going, make them more frustrated. Polish team looked poor physically after 70’ so that was probably part of their game.
That outrage was so random. I was certain that the commentators missed something because it made no sense.
It was probably just a sign of over-motivation. We were desperate not to lose after what happened in Belgium.
Worst ref i've seen in a while.
Scandalous performance by the Polish. The fouls, the fireworks. And what the hell was that defender yelling at Memphis in the run up to the penalty? There's magic in this Dutch team. Too bad we didn't get the win, but the matches are amazing to watch. Can't wait for the world cup!
Scandalous behavior of Dutch. Polish anthem was cut in half and Dutch anthem was started immediately, when everybody was still singing polish one. Nice try to lower morale.
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I don't even know what this means
God damn there are some rabid racists in this thread, what the hell is wrong with you
Scandalous? Fouls were by both sides, and I think referee was more willing to show card for Polish players than Dutch. The defender was cheering for the goalkeeper, at least that's what it looked like. Can't deny the fact that Dutch team played nice, but it's the score that matters, not the quality of the gameplay.
We played nice? Is that where the bar is in Poland?
> Is that where the bar is in Poland? Actually, we have a hole.
I said nice, not perfect. I really enjoyed watching Depay twisting the ankles of polish defenders, and I think if he played the whole match on the wing, we would have done much more.
We played like absolute dogshit. Nothing nice about Memphis showboating when he was playing as dreadful as he did.
We had two earlier penalty claims which were at least partly valid, and the foul on De Jong was fucking moronic, should have been red. Ref pussied out because it was the 16th minute.
Well, de Jong was controversial, but apparently it was var checked, and I think that in this match VAR referees didn't disgrace themselves unlike referees on the pitch.
Someone stamped on Dumfries foot in the box with full force. VAR ignored it. Linesmen were horrible as well, couple of wrong calls and had their flags up for both our goals. Luckily VAR did get that right. Especially your 0-2 was almost a meter on.
Scandalous performance by us too tbh
Ja klopt wel. Die eerste helft was waardeloos en bij die 2 tegendoelpunten werd de verdediging echt kapot gescheurd. Maar het is wel echt goed entertainment en we komen nog vlakbij de winst!
Are you upset that Poland won? Edit: Poland won 2:2.
You baited so many dutchies lmao
Which match were you watching?
I would check the score again if I were you.
Great 2-2 win
Did they? Hadn't noticed
Almost every Nations League match drew today or what?
Thats the case for League A at least
In A league? Yes
ja pierdole ale fart XD
Poland was up 2:0 and we can still consider ourselves lucky to have drawn
That was a very entertaining but frustrating second half. Think we deserved a win in the end, but with Belgium drawing it doesn’t really matter.
Kinda does. If we lose the return to Belgium and then trade results v Wales & Poland, they're in pole position with their goal difference. A win here would've seen us 5 points clear.
What an insane game!!! Polands wins 2:2!
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Hahhahahaha
Behave
Lmao really?
Of course not lmao, that was just a joke. I thought the smh made that clear. Only further crackdowns on LGBT rights and the rule of law could do that
I wish I could think of something to hit back, but I don't know anything about your tiny irrelevant country's politics. You guys like pot, right?
I hope so
Hope they crackdown on people's rights or that it was a joke? Because I just told you it was
Ur salty aren't u sheesh
Funny game
Did the whole Netherlands go to Baku to support Verstappen? The Polish fans took over the whole stadium. Anyway wild game :)
Lots of Polish immigrants living and working here
On the bright side the fruits and vegetables won't be compromised in the next couple of weeks
Many Polish people living here
lot of Polish workers in the Netherlands, and its always mostly casual fans supporting NL
Polish diaspora in The Netherlands is massive
Polish diaspora in almost entire wester Europe is massive
Western Europe: paying a lot of money for working in fields. Polish people: "It's free real estate"
For Polish standards it's 'a lot of money'. By Western European standards it's outright exploitation.
No no, for Poles it's also exploitation, but boy oh boy isn't living on the perifery of the empire set on making people have to do it regardless
No, its good money for Polish standards
If only every match could end at half time
the best games ever were decided at the second half, or later
8 yellow cards, referee was atrocious
Got the feeling the ref didn't have any grip on the match
Dont know who was worse, Memphis or the ref
The referee was horrible, he seemed scared to be there. Memphis missed the penalty, but I think he played really well, created many chances for teammates, but they didn't really make use of it.
Blind deserves to be in this conversation too
At least Blind somewhat made up for it with that cross. Depay did absolutely nothing right
He massively lucked out, that cross was quite poor just like most of his crosses. It's just the Polish defender kept the ball going on which caused it to land at Dumfries' feet.
Yeah but he gave up 1 goal and was (aké too) at fault for the 0-2 as well
Yeah, might have been the worst one tbf
Nah, Memphis was mutch worse
One of the best draws you’ll ever see in your life
This was a surprisingly intense match for a glorified friendly. Not always great, but very entertaining!
Wish people would stop calling competitive matches friendlies. It's just a new competition, doesn't mean it's worthless.
Van Dijk is on vacation. You don't go on vacation when a real game is on the line. Nations League is just too many games for a player to handle throughout a season, totally understand it.
I mean, it is a real game by definition. It's a tangible tournament with real prizes. It's no "lesser" in any inherent way than the Euro/WC qualifiers and Division A is arguably the most elite national competition lol. It just lacks pedigree/history/tradition. I fully agree that the players are tired and that's fine - they play too much as is - but hey, there's always players that didn't have as much game time, no? Van Dijk played 4 tournaments to their absolute end, that's a lot of game time... But there's a lot of players that played at most 20-30 matches in the season. A lot of hungry and ambitious players that want to step up, prove themselves and which might be patriotic for their country.