Tomczyk is betting on himself

It was supposed to have been Spain? Or a club from England? Or maybe a move to Belgium? The options available to Poland U17 star striker Oskar Tomczyk last summer seemed endless. Labeled as potentially one of the players who could eventually fill Robert Lewandowski's national team void after he retires.

Tomczyk was one of the key players for one of the most successful age groups in Polish youth football history. In U16, he scored 11 goals in 9 matches. For the U17, he scored 12 goals in 14 matches, including a goal in the U17 European championships. 

The American Dream

The football landscape is always changing and the destinations and routes players take are also constantly changing. United States' Major League Soccer, for years seen by many as a retirement league, has more accurately become a transition league. The league has made a lot of money by signing notably young South American talents and selling them for a big profit margin to Europe. 

This path has also recently been used by Polish players looking to find a bridge deal into Europe's top-5 leagues. These players are essentially too good to stay in Poland but also not good enough yet for a top European league. A report from Meczyki on Wednesday said Legia Warszawa's Bartosz Slisz is close to a deal with Atlanta United.

Plain and simple: Santos won't be missed

It had the makings of a great journey similarly to the time when Leo Beenhakker became the Polish national team head coach. Poland needed a boost, and the teams style of play left nobody impressed at the winter's World Cup in Qatar. The team advanced, by some miracle, despite being rated as the worst team at the tournament with the worst style of any of the 32 teams. The team needed help and someone with the resume of Fernando Santos who not only can get results but also play with a style that Polish fans and players can be proud of.

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.

Champions on the bench

On paper it would look like Poland's defense might be the strength of the team. Jan Bednarek and Matty Cash regulars in the Premier League, Robert Gumny a regular for Augsburg in Germany, Kamil Glik a reliable veteran who had a glorious career in Seria A and Ligue 1 and always is a impact player for the national team, and two, soon-to-be league champions in Jakub Kiwior with Arsenal and Bartosz Bereszynski with Napoli. 

Except, the games arent played on paper. Glik is 35 and past his best. Bednarek also has seen his form drop in the past year and Kiwior and Bereszynski, play on clubs who have much better options ahead of them and are there for depth purposes. 

What we learned from Santos' first camp

Patience. It's going to take time. 

All the cliche's Polish fans have been told after a false-start for new Polish head coach Fernando Santos. Poland lost in Prague to the Czech Republic 1-3 on Friday and came out with a lucky victory over Albania 1-0 in Warsaw, in a match that likely should've ended in a draw. 

After all, previous coaches, such as Leo Beenhakker and Adam Nawalka also started very poorly and worse then Santos' three points out of possible six. 

The camp was short and Poland played two matches, but there is plenty we can take away from this grouping as Santos and Poland look forward to their next grouping in June. 

Poland's wildcard

Karol Swiderski came through yet again for Poland as they held on to a tight 1-0 win over Albania at Narodowy stadium in Warsaw on a lone goal by Swiderski. 

Swiderski who left Europe in early 2022 to join Charlotte in Major League Soccer to earn some extra money in a league that will pay extra to attract european talent and also to rejuvenate his career. MLS is a league that has shown it can help re-develop players and re-sale them back to Europe, most recently with Polish players Przemyzlaw Frankowski and Patryk Klimala. 

Eriksen collapse: A year later

 

Euro 2020 in 2021. From the minute UEFA announced the European Cup would be played as a "continental" Euro, it was met with widespread anguish by fans who knew the Euros they've always come to expect would not be replicated in 2020. And that was before any of us know what Covid-19 was. 

After Covid-19 shut the world down, Euro 2020 was moved to 2021 in hopes the world would be back like it was just two years prior. But that wasn't the case. With Covid-19 still spreading all over the world, half filled stadiums, little to no buzz in host cities, fans either barred from traveling due to covid restrictions or just frankly refusing to do so, made Euro 2021 most likely the worst European Cup to date. And that was before Denmark took on Finland in Group B. The match the world thought it lost Christian Eriksen.