Poland – Hungary. It was Lewandowski who asked Sousa to be released from the match

On Monday, the Polish national team lost 1-2 in the qualifying match with Hungary, so it will not be seeded in the first match of the play-offs to the World Cup. After the defeat, a huge wave of criticism fell on coach Paulo Sousa, who made controversial personnel decisions. The coach of the Polish national team decided, inter alia, that the team leaders: Robert Lewandowski and Kamil Glik would not play at the PGE Narodowy, while Piotr Zieliński would sit on the bench. As a result, the Poles lost to Hungary and lost the chance to be seeded in the play-off semi-final.

According to Interia, Lewandowski himself asked for Lewandowski not to be in the team for the match against Hungary. However, the team captain’s decision did not appeal to other players. To save the tense situation, the selector decided to take all the blame on himself.

As we found out, Lewandowski asked Sousa not to field him in the match against Hungary. In the past, similar requests were made to the Bayern Munich forward several times, both during the tenure of Adam Nawałka and Jerzy Brzęczek. Sousa agreed that Lewandowski would not play against Hungary, he also agreed that the captain should sit on the bench (despite the fact that he could not play because he was not entered into the match team).

At the same time, Glik and his family were sitting in the VIP stand. In this case, the decision to prevent the experienced defender from appearing at PGE Narodowy was caused by the desire to protect him before the first play-off match (Glik is threatened with suspension due to yellow cards).

The third absentee – Zieliński – just like “Lewy: sat on the bench, but just after the break he appeared on the pitch and introduced a breeze of quality. It was not enough, however, to beat the Hungarians.

Lewandowski’s decision was not to appeal to his team mates who did not understand why their captain resigned from appearing in such an important match. The tense atmosphere can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage published by “Join us by the ball”, in which Sousa at one point says: “Today, everyone, including us, did not make the right decisions. Everyone.”

After the game, the coach decided to take everything “on the chest” and divert attention from the captain’s request. That was one of the reasons why he uttered the extremely controversial words: “It’s always easy to judge by the result, but I’m a person who is not afraid of difficult decisions. We have to trust our players to make them a step forward. I repeat again: I would make the same decision.”

Sebastian Staszewski, Interia

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