Should we really accept Cheslav Mikhnevich’s agonizing pragmatism?

The pictures from the game against Mexico were depressing. Our team, infected by their coach’s anti-football, was unable to take practically any sensible action. Lewandowski was alone in the attack, like an island in the middle of the ocean. The ball to our captain was most often knocked out by the goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny from under his own goal.

The rest of the technically great internationals were useless because the ball flew over their heads. Our team’s style of play has become a meme in Poland. And in the world he is greeted with surprise and ridicule. Are we doomed to a repeat of Saturday’s game against Saudi Arabia?

This tactic offends players

There is such a word as embarrassment. Not very elegant, but perfectly reflects the playing style of the Mikhnevich team. Yes, Poland plays embarrassingly. At the World Cup, the world football festival, we don’t want to play football. We build our own gates as if it were a championship in putting buses into our own penalty area. The way the breeder has chosen for his team is actually offensive to the players of that team. He kind of told them: we don’t play football because you don’t know how to do it well enough. You are only fit to annoy.

Mikhnevich feels confident. He has a political lobby behind him, he is surrounded by media protection of many influential journalists. He can always count on preferential treatment. The day after the hopeless match with Mexico, the coach himself approached a group of journalists who were present at the team’s training in Qatar, because he knows how to build his PR.

Interestingly, he was not asked difficult questions, there were no complaints or attacks. In the same situation, Jerzy Brzeczek would have been torn to shreds. Still, Brzecek had better results, and his national team’s style of play has never been as hopeless as in matches against Mexico or Chile. But Mikhnevich is not treated as cruelly as Brzeczek.

Therefore, at this impromptu meeting with the media, he calmly fed journalists his stories, as if he were feeding … pigeons. The manager asked: show me a more attacking squad than the one I put on Mexico? The argument, of course, misses the point, but serves as an alibi for Mikhnevich. Unfortunately, this is a bad alibi. He can’t handle reality.

After all, the whole drama of the match with Mexico was not in which players took the field, but in the fact that Mikhnevich chose an ultra-defensive style of play. So what if there are attacking players in midfield like Piotr Zielinski or Sebastian Szymanski if the ball flies over their heads all the time. Both are not giants and will not fight opponents in aerial duels. They need ground play, lots of ball touches, short passing combinations. Meanwhile, Mikhnevich’s idea was not to build an action, to play direct, simple football. Not to say rude.

Heath Lewandowski

The main element of Mikhnevich’s “tactics” for Mexico was that Wojciech Szczesny hit the balls “from the top five” into the opponents’ defense zone, and Robert Lewandowski fought air duels with opponents there. The style of play is so rough it couldn’t be rougher. Opta, an application that specializes in collecting football data, has published horrific statistics. Well, Robert Lewandowski received only 32 applications from his colleagues during the entire meeting with Mexico! For 90 minutes! But - attention! – as much as 44 percent of these passes “Levi” received in the air, from the goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny! It’s really shocking, but Mikhnevich is pleased with his tactical idea…

What can Lewandowski do with his back to the opponent’s goal, being covered by the opponent, when he receives the ball to the chest? In addition, the ball flies several tens of meters (in football slang “lag”), it is difficult to receive it, and the whole action becomes very predictable for opponents. To say that this is an outdated style is to say nothing. Nobody plays football like this anymore. This is the football middle ages.