Poland national football team at the 2006 Football World Cup

By user Bobo

Poland have once again qualified for the World Cup, having had a torrid few tournaments of late. Having never qualified for the European Championships, the team has had to rely on the world stage in order to perform, and has not really done so for a good twenty years, having last truly impressed in 1982, when they finished in third place.

For that matter, Poland have never qualified for the European Championships in its 44 year existence and don't look like doing so any time soon. I'm not saying their squad is poor, containing players such as Celtic's Artur Boruc, and Tomasz Rząsa from Den Haag, but a great amount of what happens in Poland happens very much at home, within a tight-knit sporting basis.

Their initial qualification as one of the two top teams of their group looks fairly sound, having been drawn against Germany, Costa Rica and Ecuador, and their current league is in very good shape, albeit with the big guns of Legia Warszawa and Wisla Kraków dominating once again. It’s also pleasant to witness, however, that the Legia team has one of the best goal-scoring distributions per player in the whole of the top division.

With Paweł Janas still at the helm of the team after four years (having taken over at this point in the last World Cup) it would be nice to see them attempt to emulate their form of twenty-four years ago, and with only one other truly big gun in their group, things may well go in the right direction for them, at least for now.