When Poland takes on Group A leader and historical foe Germany in Dortmund today, the red and whites will be playing for their World Cup lives and trying to salvage national honor after a disastrous opener against Ecuador.
"This match is very, very important. If we don't get three points or even one, we can pack our bags and go home," coach Pawel Janas told a press conference in Germany.
"The match with Germany is the match of our life. It's a question of `to be or not to be,'" said the Polish coach, seeking inspiration in a time of difficulty from Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet.
Poland's and Germany's histories have often been tragically intertwined in the last 70 years.
The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 was the spark that ignited World War II, a conflict in which Poland paid a high price in human life.
In a touch of historic irony, the match in Dortmund falls on the 66th anniversary of the arrival of the first trainload of prisoners -- all Polish -- at the Auschwitz death camp, set up by Nazi Germany in southern Poland at the start of World War II.
But allusions to old rivalries and war-time animosity stop there.
"War is not football," sports journalist Przemyslaw Rudzki of mass circulation Polish tabloid Fakt said.
Fakt devoted its entire front page on Saturday to Poland's 2-0 defeat against Ecuador the previous night, using three of the many words in Polish for "shame," plus "compromising" and "losers" to tell the squad what it thought of its performance.
The story ended with the sentence: "Don't come back home."
Poland's Ebi Smolarek, who plays for German side Borussia Dortmund, said the ambiance in the team was "good" after a meeting on Monday, but made a sideways admission that self-esteem was down around the level of socks whose elastic has gone.
"We have to think about how we played in the first match and we have to make ourselves believe that we can play well," he told a press conference in Germany.
"I will give more than 100 percent and I hope all the others will, too. We have to win against Germany," Smolarek said in response to a question about what message he wanted to give to Poland's fans, who have so far confounded pundits by not behaving like the rabble-rousers German and Polish police had predicted they would.
"The fans created a great atmosphere during the match against Ecuador and I want to apologize to them for our behavior," Janas said at the same press conference.
In another twist of irony, two of Germany's star strikers are Polish-born -- Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski.
"The German line-up of forwards is really a Polish line-up. If Germany wins, it's highly probable that one of these two will score," said Rudzki of Fakt.
"They grew up in Germany and see Germany as their homeland. Some people may hold it against them. But it's their choice and we have to respect it," he added.
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