On January 24, 2023, it seemed like a perfect match. Santos was hired to guide a aging Polish team, fix their issues on the fly and not only make it to Euro 2024, but also make a run and play a attractive style of play at the same time. He said all the right things at his opening press conference. He'll be living in Poland, he will attend Polish league matches, he will work with youth coaches and in player development, he said maybe the Portuguese do some things different then in Poland and he can help close the gaps.
Just like Beenhakker in the mid-2000s, Santos made it his goal to not just help this current core of players gain success, but also wanted to leave a legacy behind in Polish football that will see it thriving for long after he is gone. Try out new players, go recruit youngsters and attach himself to their development (like Beenhakker did with Robert Lewandowski), hire Polish assistant coaches, as also Beenhakker did, having Adam Nawalka on his bench, who later became Poland's national team coach himself.
It all sounded great and promising, but thats where it all stopped.
Santos said he would come live in Poland. He never did. His Warsaw apartment sat empty unless he was in town during a national team camp. He said he was going to move his wife and daughter and learn the language. Even at the very end, he couldn't even string one sentence together. He attended three Polish ekstraklasa matches early on, and that was it for him for a while. He said the level wasn't good enough to justify his time attending those matches.
When media asked him about some of his promises, he got defensive. Said it wasn't his fault theres not many good quality assistants and that it forced his hand to hire his own. He said he didn't need to speak Polish or even English because he spoke "football". Complained how a country of 40 million didn't have one proper left back and wondered what Poland was doing wrong in player development. What he didn't quite understand was, those 40 million people have the right to rant. Santos on the other hand got paid very handsomely to work on a solution. And thats where the problem lies.
Santos wasn't a "fighter". On a team where they lacked leadership and "fighters", the coach not willing to fight was a glaring problem.
When the matches began in March, everything fell apart. In the first match, Santos tried a creative lineup. Started Karol Linetty and Piotr Zielinski at CM, Krystian Bielik at CDM, two out-of-form center backs Jan Bednarek and Jakub Kiwior at CB and Michal Karbownik and Matty Cash as wing backs. The Czech's exploited the scheme with two goals in the first three minutes. If that wasn't bad enough, they nearly made it 3-0 within the first-five minutes. The Czech's out ran, out muscled and out worked Santos' side. And in return, Poland showed zero "fight" to get back and show some pride. Nobody on the pitch seemed angry. Poland ended the game without a single yellow card. The team conceded to the soft mentality of their coach. You play to the personalty of your coach some would say.
The results never got better, in fact got worse. Poland up 2-0 away at Moldova when at half-time the Moldovan coach told his players this game was still for the taking because the Polish team was playing soft. Moldova came out aggressive and attacking. Poland wasn't ready to fight and allowed three second-half goals. And if that wasn't bad enough, Moldova scored a fourth goal, which was overruled by V.A.R. but to this day nobody knows how that was overturned. Similar to the match in Prague, Poland watched and allowed Moldova increase their aggression and did nothing about it. Not a single Polish player received a yellow card that night.
The final nail in the coffin was last Sunday. In a must-win match against Albania, Poland yet again showed no fight in the team, couldnt string together any passes and didn't threaten a goal chance all night besides the one goal by Kiwior the was taken away by V.A.R. because of offsides. The style seemed worse then at the World Cup. Except, Poland wasn't playing Argentina, they were playing Albania in a match they needed to win.
Not being a "fighter" wasn't the only thing which caused Santos issues. He also didn't care to understand his players.
In his first selections, Bartosz Salamon only joined when Kamil Piatkowski got injured for RB Salzburg just before attending the grouping and was ruled out. Salamon didn't play against the Czech's, but was in the starting eleven the next match against Albania after Santos admitted his team lacked a "fighting" spirit. Rakow Czestochowa's central midfielder Ben Lederman was called up by Santos to the first grouping in March, and to the second grouping in June which they faced Germany in a friendly and Moldova. Despite Santos praising Lederman to the media, saying he has enormous potential, Lederman never entered any of the four matches he was called up to. When asked during the press conference after the selections to the third grouping, which faced off against Faroe Islands and Albania, Santos was asked why not call-up Legia Warsaw's Pawel Wszolek. He said he's watched him but the team doesn't need any right backs. Wszolek has never played right back in his career. About two weeks later, due to a injury suffered by Nicola Zalewski, Wszolek got the call. And then became the first player to come off the bench in the match against Faroe Islands a few days later.
In the match against Faroe Islands, Santos played Michal Skoras on the right wing, when most of his success in his career have come on the left side. In the last match vs Albania, Santos took off Seba Szymanski who was one of the only players trying to create and got several good crosses in from set pieces, including the pass on the over-turned goal by Kiwior. It has been reported that Santos had called up goalkeeper Kamil Grabara via text message. Grabara rejected the call-up due to a prior commitment. He didn't care to know his players strengths and weaknesses.
At the end, Santos had zero players debut during his tenure. His Polish coaching record was just six matches, 3 wins and 3 losses, 7 goals for, 8 goals against.
Plain and simple: Santos won't be missed. The team that lacked leadership and fight had a coach without a ounce of leadership and fight in him. And in the process the team lost their sense of joy and excitement for the sport they love.
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