Watching and analyzing our national team's matches in recent years, I've wondered where the problem lies. And I've noticed that perhaps our team's biggest problem lies in the minds of our players. Often, athletes think that if the skills are there but they're not, it means there's something mentally wrong, and watching our team's matches, I have the same impression. Let's be honest, the team's skills as a whole will never be enough to consistently beat Spain, England, France, the Netherlands, or Germany. Plus Argentina or Brazil. One Lewandowski isn't enough. The best have "Lewandowskis" in several positions, plus a bench. The problem is that for the past few years (since the Qatar World Cup), we've even struggled to beat mid-table players, whom we've been beating, for better or worse. I wanted to look at two levels.
The problem is when things start going wrong
What's the problem? Our team gives the impression of playing according to a certain pattern; if something goes wrong, it's as if the whole concept collapses like a house of cards, and our team doesn't know what to do. Against the Finns in the last match, the first 30 minutes didn't look bad at all; moreover, it looked like the Finns couldn't hurt us that day. We attacked, created several chances, and suddenly, one mistake by goalkeeper Skorupski, and everything fell apart. Mistakes happen, but instead of coming back from the deadlock and equalizing as quickly as possible, our team looked completely lost. The Finns seized the initiative and scored a second goal. It took us a while to recover, but time, among other things, prevented us from scoring more than a goal. But that wasn't the end of it. In 2023, against Albania away, nothing happened in front of our goal either until Albania scored their first goal. The goal was scored, and the game was over. A more dramatic example was the match in Chișinău, where we were leading 2-0 at halftime, looking like we could still score a few goals, but then a goal came close, and suddenly our team lost it against a weak Moldova, losing 2-3. And that was just Moldova. We also played a good match against Portugal in the Champions League, scored one goal, then everything fell apart, and it ended 1-5. Against Argentina at the World Cup in Qatar, after the first goal, we didn't even leave our half until the end, fearing we'd concede more goals and be eliminated from the group. The last two competitive matches we won after losing were against Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2020 and Wales in 2022, both 2-1. There are more such examples, but I've left out the draws and only listed the ones that ended in defeat. I left the defeat in Prague for Fernando Santos, because the goals were scored too quickly to draw any conclusions.
My conclusion is that the Poles go into matches with a plan in mind, ignoring plans B, C, D, etc. If something goes wrong, the entire match concept falls apart, and they can't seem to get back to where they were. It's sad, but that's how it is.
The problem of believing in defeating a stronger rival
The Poles last won against a highly ranked opponent under Nawałka in 2014 – 2-0 against Germany. Away wins are a long way off. I'm not counting Santos's win against Germany for two reasons: 1. It was a friendly; 2. The Germans played very poorly then and lost almost everything. The question is, are the Poles so weak that they haven't been able to win in those 11 years? Of course, as I mentioned at the beginning, we don't have a squad strong enough to consistently win like that right now. But you can't say we haven't had the opportunity. Sometimes I get the impression that our team doesn't believe they can beat such an opponent. Last year against Croatia, we went from 1-3 down to 3-3, we were ahead, we attacked, it seemed like it might be our day, and guess what? And then our team stopped playing, as if they thou