Poland Eliminated from the U20 World Cup

Poland's World Cup hopes are done at the hands of Argentina following a 3-1 defeat Poland started out strong and scored the first goal after the midway point of the half and the game was becoming reminiscent of the opening match against Brazil. Except Argentina struck back. And then things went downhill fast when Argentina scored very early in the second half and the match went into a coma for the next 30-40 minutes until Argentina added another late one to seal the deal.

The first half was entertaining, the second was painfully dry with few chances. Disappointing to see Poland lose after for the fourth consecutive game holding the lead (that's a 1-1-2 record when scoring first if you're keeping track...not impressive in the least).

But there are reasons to not fret over this loss. I'll do my best to try and rationalize why this was not a bad showing for Poland:

1. Last year Poland barely qualified for this tournament and looked like the weakest team in Europe to qualify, maybe it still was. But either way one could not ignore they would be underdogs to just get out past the group stages, especially the group they were drawn into. Any success would have to be considered a pleasant surprise.

2. Poland had a strong showing defensively against Brazil, played Korea fairly well, and even Argentina for at least a half. Few would have put money on Poland accomplishing this much.

3. Dawid Janczyk who was overshadowed by the hype of other supposed big names showed that he was the star people were hyping him out to be scoring in 3 of 4 matches for Poland and without a doubt proving he was the most talented, and best player Poland had. A coming out party for him of sorts.

4. The amount of support that Polish fans showed for the NT. For us Canadians, this may convince PZPN to get the senior team over considering all the support. PZPN seems to like arranging matches in Chicago with such a large Polish fan base, so it would seem logical to also do get some going in Canada. A friendly with Canada is well overdue and this tournament may have shown there is more than enough reason to take the trip.

5. They made it past the group stage, something the senior team has had enormous difficulty doing in recent history. And the senior team arguably matched up better against its rivals than the offensively challenged Polish U20 team we saw with little depth outside of Janczyk. It was nice for once to see Poland in an elimination, we'll just have to wait a bit longer for them to win one.

6. Despite seeing a lot of it, Poland kept its pride and did not take dives like some of their opponents. They played a respectable, hard-working game that any fan would be proud of. Whether Globisz utilized their skills and talents is another thing, but they definitely gave it their all and could not be accused of going down easily.