Poland 1 Canada 0

It was a much better performance from Canada, though to be honest Poland didn’t exactly impress.

Poland started: Kuszczak - Rzezniczak, Zewlakow, Sadlok, Gancarczyk - Peszko, Dudka, Obraniak, Kosowski - Rybus - Lewandowski

While Canada had:
---------------------Hirschfeld
Stalteri----Jakovic----McKenna----Klukowski
Peters---Hutchinson--DeGuzman--De Jong
-----------------Friend----Radzinski

I thought the French-based duo of Dudka and Obraniak both played well and Rybus was very active. The Canadians held their shape better and we played, much more quickly than we did against Macedonia, but we lost almost every 50-50 ball.

We were too flat in both attack and defending. There wasn’t enough movement in attack and we left a lot of space (esp. for balls cut back) in defence. The goal came on a long cross that was sent to the edge of the area and Obraniak too much time and space to nod it in to his feet from the edge of the area after Kosowski had too much time on the left to cross it in.
Rybus took a left-footed strike as he turned after having his back to goal. It was a nice strike, but the marking in the lead-up was too slack.

De Jong looked sharp early and Peters wasn’t overly involved, but was very dangerous when he had the ball. De Guzman was better, but that mostly meant he just got fouled a lot. Friend was very quiet and Stalteri and McKenna were better, but not very good. Actually Stalteri was average, McKenna was probably a little sub-par - not good in the air and one criminally bad give-away that should have been a goal. Klukowski didn’t get forward as much as I’d like, but Jakovic was pretty good.

Hirschfeld was terrifying in the first half. He tried to beat Lewandoski on the dribble and Lewandoski got a boot to it, but Hirschfeld managed to win a challenge to get the ball back. Later a ball was hit a mile high (it seemed like it was out of view of the cameras forever) and Hirschfeld inexplicable tried to punch it, missed wildly and caught it off a big bounce.

Hirschfeld was much better in the second half and made a few good reaction saves, but clearly he’s out of form without any playing time.

Radinzski worked his tail off and was one of our best players. When Jackson came in for Friend, he, Radz and Peters combined well and we created our two best chances.

Around the 78th or so the Polish server finally cracked and we lost our feeds, but apparenty the Poles hit a post and the game pretty much petered out. Simpson came in late and didn’t offer the spark I was hoping for, though De Jong had definitely drifted out of the game too.

Our cross and set pieces remain shocking. We had three corners in the first five minutes or so and probably close to 10 in the match and we didn’t even come close to causing any danger. Most of our danger came down the flanks, but nothing came from that.

Radzinski was captain for what it’s worth and got a nice ovation when he was subbed out.

Not a disaster by any means, but we have holes to fill in the back, we don’t have much of a threat up front and I don’t think we look overly comfortable in a 4-4-2. De Guzman and Hutchinson don’t get the support they need and having the outside mids as wide as they are doesn’t encourage the backs to get forward.

cheers,
hobbes