Euro 2008 Preview : Poland
Poland look to erase a disappointing World Cup showing coming into Euro 2008. They arrived in style winning their qualifying group against the likes of Portugal and Serbia.
Highlites from Poland’s 2-1 victory over Portugal in qualifying.
One through eleven Poland doesn’t match up on talent with Germany and Croatia, Leo Beenhakker has this team well prepared for what lies in front of them come the group stages.
Between the posts Poland have a wealth of talent with Celtic’s Artur Boruc, Manchester United’s Tomasz Kuszczak and Arsenal’s Łukasz Fabiański in the mix but the depth really ends there for Poland.
Trying not to take anything away from Poland since they were the best team coming out of there qualifying group and will be fired up getting to play against Germany. While each player plays and understands there position well both Germany and Croatian have game breakers which Poland will be hard pressed to match. Only 31 year old Maciej Żurawski comes into Euro 2008 with more then 15 international goals, that coming over 68 appearances. Not an impressive output for a striker.
Key Player – Artur Boruc
The strength of this Polish team will be the fact they don’t gift there opponents easy goals. The back line feature effective players such as Jacek Bąk, Marcin Wasilewski, and Michał Żewłakow but a back line is only as good as who you have in goal. Boruc is one of the finest goalie currently playing in Europe. Recently Boruc has made nosies about moving on to a bigger team and with a good performance come Euro 2008, Celtic just may end up receiving big money offers for Boruc.
Group B Outlook
As mentioned previously I like Croatia, Germany and Poland pretty equally in this group. While I feel Poland can cause an upset over Germany they are also the team that I feel will drop points to Austria which could be the difference in them not making it to the knockout stages.
Sinnacle Prediction 3rd in Group B