The smiles after the Legia Warszawa game were quickly wiped away by Lech Poznań. After a fantastic match in Vienna (5:3), with twists and turns, a fight to the end and a happy ending, came a painfully sad match – lost at one’s own request, ridiculed, destroying the chance and wasting the experience gained a year ago. Of the four Polish clubs fighting for European cups, only two remain in the game – Raków Częstochowa and Legia.
It was an evening of flipping through the TV channels, checking the scores app, and the emotions changing every time the phone vibrated to announce a goal had been scored. And he spoke constantly: three goals in the match of Pogoń Szczecin (2: 1), as many as eight in the match of Legia Warszawa (5: 3) and four in the match of Lech Poznań (1: 3). From a gentle smile, through a moment of elation, to an absolute disaster and disappointment.
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Apart from the mean feeling given by Lech at the end, we would like more such evenings. We often wrote about the money that Polish clubs had already earned after cup Thursdays and points added to the UEFA ranking, which were supposed to help us advance in the following years. But in these qualifiers there was also a fight for other dilemmas of this type, which match should be played on a large TV screen, and which on a smaller laptop or tablet. When to be with Legia, when to switch to Lech. It was an emotional fight. For attractive matches in Warsaw, Poznań and Sosnowiec. For more Thursdays like this, when everything could change from minute to minute.
Full of happiness? Fifteen minutes after 20. It only got worse after that
after At 19:30, the first smiles appeared – in the end of the match against Gent, Pogoń Szczecin scored two goals, which, although after losing 0:5 in the first match, could not do much, but winning in the second leg 2:1, it did what it could: added 0.25 points to the national ranking and said goodbye to the honor. Full of happiness? It arrived several minutes after noon. 20, when Legia Warszawa played a concert in Vienna and led 3:0 after very impressive goal actions: in the first one, Elitim’s shot delighted, in the second, Slisz’s assist, in the third – the whole thing, because Legia from their own half to the Austrian penalty area played everything note for note without a single false sound. Lech was then in Trnava after the first quarter of an hour and nothing disturbed his game yet – full control over the match, some good actions, two dangerous shots and the feeling that everything will be fine. How wrong.
Already around 20:40, neither Legia nor Lech had any advantage in their two-legged match. Legia lost two goals and with a 3:2 lead, they were getting ready for extra time. Lech, on the other hand, was losing 0:1 in Trnava, so there was a 2:2 draw on aggregate. Five minutes passed, however, and Legia was again leading by two goals and was one step away from promotion. At this point, the first half ended in Slovenia. When Lech went to the break, Legia lost the third goal. However, Lech did not manage to return to the field for the second half, and Legia scored the fifth goal and avoided extra time at the last moment. She fought to the end. After every mistake in defense, she went on the attack. She slept in her penalty area but was alert in Austria’s goal. It is true that Kosta Runjaic already said before the match that the promotion will have to be snatched. But in the 100th minute? That 5:3? That in the last offensive action? That after a goal introduced only six minutes earlier by Ernest Muci? That after so many twists and turns? After all, it was all in my head.
And there was little time to sort it out. From 21:00 we were only interested in Lech. Whoever expected that the next several dozen minutes would allow to gradually calm down emotions, lower the pulse and calm down the breath, knew after a while how wrong he was. In the 50th minute Spartak Trnava scored a goal to make it 2:0 and led 3:2 on aggregate. A dozen or so minutes later, Kristoffer Velde responded with a beautiful shot from a distance, so again there was a draw in the aggregate. But Lech did not follow suit and a quarter of an hour before the end of the meeting was again over the precipice, because a phenomenal goal with a bicycle kick was scored by the central defender – Lukas Stetina. John van den Brom’s players lacked reaction. First anger, then peace and thought. First will, then strength. There was no better tactics, but also everything that the coach will not draw on the board: aggression, determination, respect for the rival and self-confidence.
Lech Poznań sinned like the Polish team
It all lacked the right proportions. Lech Poznan, with the cup experience gained in recent months, could of course assume that by leading 2-0 at their stadium against an opponent as weak as Spartak Trnava, they are close to promotion. But at the same time, this experience should tell him that it’s still too early to take his foot off the gas. He might still be confident ahead of the second leg despite a goal conceded late in the first leg, but he had no right to assume he could outplay his opponents without breaking a sweat. How similar it was to the meeting Moldova – Poland, in which the favorites also considered the matter settled halfway through and just wanted to wait for the victory.
So then, the Moldavians, like Spartak players now, had fire in their eyes. They were fueled by every successful action. The energy went from the pitch to the stands and came back with double strength. The rivals were chasing every ball, as in the last goal action, when Kristian Kostrna slid it in almost from the end line and allowed Stetina to do a bicycle kick. And so then, Poles, like Lech players now, did not even change gear. They still played the same legibly and slowly. In both of these matches, the inaccuracy of the theoretically better players was also offensive: here a failed reception, there an inaccurate pass that invited the rivals to counterattack or allowed them to wait out the next several seconds. The statistics of fouls: 19 by Spartak and 9 by Lech, of which as many as 5 were committed in the very end, says a lot about the match in Trnava. A moment before the goal to make it 2:0 it was 12:1 for Spartak.
This departure hurts for many reasons. It limits the emotions fans are looking for. It does not help to build the UEFA ranking, although Lech’s path to the knockout phase of the Europa Conference League seemed quite simple, and the subsequent draw from the second pot made it possible to aim for a repeat of the quarter-final from the previous season. It also disturbs the positive atmosphere around the club and seriously undermines trust in the team. It’s been a long time since Lech recorded such a spectacular slip-up – he outplayed whom he was supposed to outplay, and sometimes challenged those better than himself. First of all, they seemed to be a stable team, well combining play in the cups and the league. He already knew how to do it and was to use this knowledge in the years to come. But again, it unexpectedly slowed down instead of gradually accelerating. And yet it seemed that Lech had learned to follow the blow. After the success in the championship season and the next one in the Conference League, his team was not significantly weakened and was at a similar level. Now, without the revenue from European cups and extra matches in this competition, this squad becomes a problem because it is large and expensive to maintain. Therefore, transfers of the most profitable footballers, such as Velde or Marchwiński, will not come as a surprise. Instead of a step forward, it is a step back. And this after a two-legged match in which Lech had fragments of a very good game – over an hour in Poznań and about 20 minutes in Trnava. Unfortunately, in both matches he also had a moment when he thought that they would win by themselves. And he paid dearly for it.
2023-08-18 05:17:00
#smile #absolute #disaster #Lech #sinned #Polish #team #Sport.pl
