- In June there were terrible whips from Belgium. We lost 1:6, which was an even bigger shame than on Thursday 0:2 with the Netherlands at home. And yet, after this deception, the team rose from its knees. I hope our team can do it now. I want to see a changed team in Cardiff, - says Radoslaw Maidan, the former representative of Poland.
Dariusz Tuzimek, “Wprost”: More than 17.5 thousand people took part in the Wirtualna Polska survey. Internet users - as many as 87 percent of the participants voted for the president of the Polish Football Association, Cezary Kulesza, to change his coach before the World Cup in Qatar! What do you think of this concept?
Radoslav Maidan: Bold and courageous, but this is not at all unreasonable. It can be seen with the naked eye that this team is not developing. But I am against such a change. Not because Mikhnevich convinces me, but does not convince me at all. I am against it because I think that there is too little time before the World Cup for such a revolution. If it were for the championship in half a year, it could still be done, but there are only two months left.
Any manager who comes after Mikhnevich will have an easy excuse that he received the team too late and could not do anything with it in such a short time.
I am for representative beer to be beaten out by the one who brewed it, i.e. current breeder.
At the moment, he knows the team better than anyone and knows what his shortcomings are, what needs to be improved, and so on.
But for other Polish coaches, our team is not some mysterious mystery. They watch its matches, they know the players, their potential, strengths and good sides. And maybe there would be a selector with a bit more power. Someone who will have a real impact on this group of players. Someone they will listen to.
I only think of one person - Adam Navalka. He is still a great personality in Polish football, and the last coach to have success with the team was the quarter-finals of the European Championship in France in 2016. Navalka would also benefit from the fact that at the end of January he and his staff had almost reached an agreement with President Kulesha that they would take over the representation. So - as far as I know this coach - he was perfectly prepared for the task, he knew everything about the team.
It is worth recalling that at that time even the media announced that Navalka was already a breeder. We will probably find out many years later how it happened that Mikhnevich won this position on the last straight. It really surprised me. After all, this coach did not have any success immediately before leading the team. We remember the atmosphere in which he said goodbye to the Warsaw Legia, which he left in a terrible state and at the place of departure. And as a “reward” he received representation … Strange and incomprehensible.
The match with the Netherlands was an unpleasant sight for the Polish fans, because we are not used to such helplessness of the White-Reds. You can see that our team hasn’t made any progress since the play-off match against Sweden.
It seems to me that we are forgetting what the March meeting with Sweden was like. I remember only the result that we won 2-0 and it seems to us that it was an excellent match in our performance. Well no… We played a good 20-30 minutes and that was after the second goal after the match was set up. Before that, we were very lucky, because: firstly, Wojtek Szczesny saved us twice, protecting us in almost hopeless situations, and secondly: in the first half, Jacek Guralski could have earned a red card.
The match with Sweden was not successful for us, although it gave us access to the World Cup in Qatar. Indeed, the team led by Mikhnevich did not notice any development after that meeting. We play just as average as in the June matches of the League of Nations, and maybe even weaker.
Source: Wprost
