If FIFA decided to create a football league for nations made up of 18-team divisions, Poland would find itself in division four. The world football governing body’s latest rankings place Poland at 58, just below Hungary, Northern Ireland and Tunisia.
But should Polish fans really expect to see their national team placed higher than amongst the fourth-rate small-fry? The answer must surely be yes, given the country’s size and a tradition which has seen it finish third in two World Cups as well as winning the Olympics, during a golden decade back in the 70s and early 80s. Most teams, when they make the breakthrough, to the big time, manage to stay there – or thereabouts. But ever since Poland beat France to claim third place at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, the national team has gone steadily downhill, although it did manage to pick itself up again during a brief six year period which ended last year.
Looking at the 57 teams above Poland, most of them have achieved far less on the world stage and many have smaller populations from which to choose players. The question the Polish faithful are asking is, why should Lithuania, Latvia, Burkina Faso, Australia, Ghana, Slovakia, Costa Rica, Israel, Bulgaria, Gabon, Canada and the FYR Macedonia be able to put together better football sides than Poland? In the case of Canada and Australia, football isn’t even their national game. Taking these factors into account, as well as the fact that most of Poland’s 38 million population claim to take an interest in the game, and this is nothing short of pathetic.
Traditionally the excuse is trundled out that the best Polish stars play abroad. But so do the best Croats (ranked 10th) Serbs (ranked 15th) and even the Argentinians (7th) and the Dutch (4th), whose best players appeared in this year’s Champions League final between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich?
It is perhaps ironic that the person who took overall charge of Polish football just when the reprezentacja seemed to be crawling out of its hole and has therefore lorded over yet another catastrophic collapse, is Grzegorz Lato. One of Poland’s finest players he was top scorer in the 1974 World Cup and prominent member of Poland’s greatest team ever.
It had taken 16 long years of wandering in the international football wilderness, when Poland failed to qualify for either one of the two major tournaments, before the curse was finally broken in 2002: Poland managed to reach their sixth World Cup finals, in Japan/South Korea, under Jerzy Engel. Engel was then booted out immediately afterwards when the reprezentacja flopped badly.
His successor was arguably Poland’s greatest footballer Zbigniew Boniek, who failed, as had all previous coaches to take Poland to the 2004 European Championships.
However, Pawel Janas managed to make a second successive World Cup finals, even if 2006 turned out to be an almost exact repetition of the previous one for the Poles.
Enter the Dutch master Leo Beenhakker, who listed being coach of the world’s biggest club Real Madrid on his CV, and he managed to do what no Polski szkoleniowiec had ever done – take Poland into their first ever European Championships.
But Austria/Switzerland 2008 proved to be yet another disaster – as did the following World Cup qualifiers when the reprezentacja somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And it may be just a coincidence – but the rot seems to have set in soon after Lato’s appointment – it is a known fact that the president didn’t see eye to eye with Beenhakker, who accused him of interfering. Lato got rid of the Dutchman and Poland’s future now rests in the hands of a well-respected coach, Franciszek Smuda, who has enjoyed success at club level with Widzew Lodz and Lech Poznan.
On reflection, the six years between 2002 and 2008 did bring some success, in three tournament qualifying stages, following 16 years when Poland almost disappeared off the radar altogether. Fortunately though, and thanks only to behind the scenes work by the PZPN and possibly the Polish government, the country will not have to wait another 16 years before appearing in another major international tournament. Poland will be co-hosting Euro 2012 with Ukraine, but which Polish team will the fans see in front of their own eyes? The sides who did so well in 1974, 1982 and even 1986? Or, the ones which fizzled out so pathetically after having qualified so well in 2002, 2006 and 2008?
