"There's no point in hiding behind mistakes, we played a bad game. We can only apologise to everyone. For long minutes there was complete silence in the dressing room" - spokesman for Poland's football national team Jakub Kwiatkowski said on Tuesday. On Monday, Poland's top players lost to Slovakia 1:2, significantly slimming their chances of qualifying to Euro 2020 knock-out stage.
The spokesman for the team stressed a number of times that simple mistakes, which had been already visible in friendly games, were the reason for such a poor start.
"The result of the second game in our group (goalless draw between Spain and Sweden) means if we don't earn any points against Spain, the tournament will be over for us, before it even really began" - the spokesman said.
"We hope to rebuild morale in the next few days. The crucial thing now is to go to face Spain head-on and play our best. The Spanish will play under pressure so we have an extremely difficult match ahead of us" - Kwiatkowski underscored.
In his view, the most experienced players would now be responsible for raising the spirits in the team.
He firmly denied claims that the team completely lacked team spirit. "That's not true. The atmosphere was indeed excellent, but it's the players who go out to play football" - he said.
Kwiatkowski also stressed it was not a good time for grading each player individually. "This is a team, it's not about who played well, and who played bad. It would be difficult to praise or reprimand anyone. It would be very easy to blame Grzegorz Krychowiak for everything, but the coach said that's not the way to go" - he said in relation to the red card received by the Polish midfielder.
The spokesman said he had no knowledge if Krychowiak apologised to his teammates, as due to media duty he only rejoined them 30-40 minutes after the game. "I can only say that he said he was sorry in conversation with me".
Kwiatkowski also commented on the performance of Polish defence, which has faced widespread criticism after the Monday's game.
"Anyone can see we're conceding lots of goals. Mainly from set pieces. This happened at Wembley, then against Russia, and same thing yesterday. Banal mistakes, no marking. The players were instructed to mark Skriniar individually, and yet they lost him" - he said referring to the second goal scored by Slovakia.
The team returned to Sopot to practice for Saturday's (June 19) game against Spain in Seville.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English,
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: TVN24