The world football legend has a harsh opinion about the Polish national team. A devastating assessment
The Netherlands is one of the Poles' rivals in the Euro 2024 group. Marco van Basten, the Oranje legend, expressed a harsh opinion about the way the Polish national team plays.
Two matches and two successes. This is how you can sum up the March campaign of the Polish national team, which qualified for Euro 2024. The Poles showed character, but also quite good play, especially remembering what happened several months ago. For example, during the work of coach Fernando Santos.
Marco van Basten sharply criticizes the style of the Polish national team
The Dutch will be one of the Poles' opponents in the European Championship final tournament. Oranje do not really believe in the strength of their rivals from the Vistula. At least this is not the belief of Marco van Basten, a former great footballer and, after many years, also an ex-Dutch coach.
According to the three-time Ballon d'Or winner (1988, 1989, 1992) and, among others, European champion (1988), Poland does not have much to offer in terms of football. The legend spoke to the Voetbalprimeur.nl portal.
– They are a stiff team that doesn't want to attack or play much football. A team showing little initiative. Mainly they defend themselves (…) We should defeat Poland calmly. Especially if the threat from Robert Lewandowski is neutralized. He is a very good striker, but I don't think we will have any major complications with Poland – TVP Sport quotes the Dutchman's harmful words.
Why harmful? It seems that van Basten formed an opinion about the Poles from the time of competition in the group phase of the qualifying rounds for the European Championship 2024. In the case of the two-legged play-off, the successes against Estonia and Wales seem to paint a slightly different picture of the team led by coach Michał Probierz.
Poland advances to Euro 2024. Who will they play against in Germany?
Even before the March play-offs began, UEFA drew the groups for this year's European Championship. The Poles will play in Germany against the Netherlands, France and Austria. What does the exact schedule look like? The White and Reds will start with a match against the Netherlands on June 16 in Hamburg (3:00 p.m.). Then Poland – Austria in Berlin (21/06, 18:00) and at the end of the group games the most difficult challenge, France – Poland. The match against the world runners-up is scheduled for June 25 in Dortmund, from 6:00 p.m.
Interestingly, only in 2016 did the Polish national team manage to achieve anything at a European Championship event. The team led by coach Adam Nawałka then reached the quarterfinals in France. In 2008, 2012 and 2021, Poles took… the last, fourth places in the groups.
What will it be like in Germany? Coach Probierz's team will certainly face a difficult challenge.
