{"id":4129,"date":"2024-12-03T14:30:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T14:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=4129"},"modified":"2024-12-03T14:30:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T14:30:17","slug":"moment-of-truth-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2024\/12\/03\/moment-of-truth-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Moment of Truth<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (March 25th<\/sup> 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sack Race?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s winner takes all tomorrow night at Cardiff City Stadium. Both Cymru and Poland know that a win will take them to Germany\u2019s Euro2024, but the losing coach knows that the sack is the likely consequence. Former midfielder, Micha\u0142 Probierz, was appointed coach of Poland last year. Since Jerzy Brz\u0119czek was sacked after almost two-and-a-half years in charge in January 2021, Poland have gone through three coaches before Probierz \u2013 Paulo Carvalho de Sousa, Czes\u0142aw Michniewicz and the first coach to win a major trophy for Portugal, Fernando Fernandes da Costa Santos. In September 2023 Santos was sacked by Poland \u2013 he took over at Be\u015fikta\u015f in January this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probierz knows that failure to reach the Euros could cost him his job, so does Cymru boss Rob Page, but neither are contemplating defeat. Both have studied the opposition, but are concentrating on their team\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The End of the Transitional Period?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could have been a battle of greats, but Wales\u2019s leading scorer, record caps holder, and one of if not the greatest player they ever produced, Gareth Bale retired from football at the start of qualifiers for Euro2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page waxed lyrical about him, but recognises that this is the test of the transition that he has been guiding Wales through. He has a young team, but one that is strangely experienced in its way. Leeds United\u2019s captain, Ethan Ampadu is only 23 years-old, yet last Thursday, he became the youngest Welshman to reach 50 caps, breaking Bale\u2019s record. But Bale is a hard player to do without.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had one of the world\u2019s best footballers and it shows how far we\u2019ve come in a short space of time,\u201d Page said. \u201cWe\u2019re only one tournament past Gareth\u2019s retirement and one win away from qualifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we can be there or thereabouts at the end of the qualifying campaign, while we\u2019re still in this transition of introducing young players without some of the world-class senior players we\u2019ve had, then we\u2019re in a good place. It shows the strength in depth and quality we\u2019ve got coming through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talisman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Bale has hung up his boots, Poland\u2019s veteran talisman is still leading the line and his country aged 35. By his own very high standards Robert Lewandowski has had a poor season so far with Bar\u00e7elona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page is under no illusions that Lewandowski\u2019s class is permanent, even if his form has taken a dip recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLewandowski is a fantastic player, we\u2019ll respect that, of course. But it stops there. We\u2019ve done some analysis on him and shown the defenders what he\u2019s capable of doing. But it\u2019s about us imposing ourselves on them. We know Poland have an abundance of quality. They\u2019ve a new manager. They\u2019ve had some positive results. But it\u2019s about the best we can play. If we do that the result takes care of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incredibly, the question of whether Probierz is concerned about Lewandowski\u2019s form in Spain has never been raised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoland have some individuals but, collectively, as a team, we\u2019re more than capable of giving a level of performance to get the job done,\u201d said Page, and they are formidable at home, being unbeaten in 20 of their last 23 matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (March 25th 2024) The Sack Race? It\u2019s winner takes all tomorrow night at Cardiff City Stadium. Both Cymru and Poland [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[801,805,701,703,75,217,234,210],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4130,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions\/4130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}