Faces of Football: Poland – a letter to the national team

Faces of Football: Poland – a letter to the national team

Poland

A letter to the Polish national team for the 2022 World Cup.

Dear Polish national team,

I am a psychotherapist and climbing trainer living in Kraków. I’ve been playing and watching soccer since I was a little kid.

What I remember most is the anticipation of kick-off in big games and the excitement as the players came out of the tunnel.

As a kid, I always trusted myself to predict the outcome of any game – even the scorers and everything else. However, my predictions were mostly quite wrong, because no matter who they played against, I always guessed Poland as the winner.

That made a lot of my predictions difficult because my childhood came at a pretty bleak time for the Polish national team. The 1990s weren’t the best of times for a Poland fan because we suffered disappointment after disappointment. I remember most clearly the 1998 World Cup qualifier, when Italy beat us 3-0.

On the other hand, a happy memory was Marek Citko’s goal at Wembley Stadium, which gave Poland a 1-0 lead over England… We lost the game, but it was still a nice moment. I vividly remember watching the games with my two older brothers and my father and I remember how important those shared moments of cheering on our nation were.

There were many memorable moments when we cheered for Poland together, but arguably the best was when Poland and Ukraine hosted Euro 2012 together. I’ve dreamed of that since I was a kid – even if we didn’t do particularly well in the tournament.

I think we have a really good team now that can excel in big tournaments. Piotr Zielinski is my favorite player at the moment because he’s mastering football with ease and he finally seems ready to lead the midfield after a few years of not performing well at international level.

I will watch this tournament with my friends and family and I hope we can manage the stress together. I’m sure we can get through our group this year, but every small win will be greeted with a big cheer that’s sure to last deep into the night.

My only advice to the team is that they believe in themselves and fight from the first minute to the last.

This article was originally published on 90min.de as Faces of Football: Poland – a letter to the national team released.

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