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Poles look to catch Croatia on the hop

Poland coach Leo Beenhakker has all but conceded that the controversial last-minute penalty which handed Austria a draw with them on Thursday effectively eliminated them from Euro 2008.

However, the 65-year-old must still gee up his troops for their final match against an impressive Croatia side and hope that an impressive win over them and an Austrian win over Germany can achieve a miracle.

Given that Austria have a slightly better goal difference it really will need to be a crushing win for the Poles, which on the evidence of the previous two matches does not seem likely.

One thing going for Beenhakker is that Croatian coach Slaven Bilic is unlikely to field his first choice side now that they are definitely in the quarter-finals.

Beenhakker, though, has not enjoyed much luck in his campaign and as Napoleon said all he wanted was to be brought lucky generals and one feels Beenhakker wouldn’t have been on his list — especially as for such an experienced coach he is yet to win a match at a major finals.

The men most likely to be turned to by Beenhakker to get the goals after his frontline has been decimated by injuries, will be Brazilian-born Roger Guerreiro and Marek Saganowski.

The 29-year-old set up Guerreiro for their goal against Austria but admits that it is a tough ask for him and his teammates to raise themselves for the Croatian game after the penalty blow.

“It will be very hard to lift morale and confidence after what’s happened,” he told the UEFA Web site.

“We have to play Croatia, who will be on a high after beating Germany 2-1,” Saganowski said. “It should be a good game but a hard one for us. Our confidence will be low.”

Croatia’s spirits will certainly be high but to a certain extent Bilic will have to weigh up resting key players and risk them going off the boil prior to the quarters or play them and then risk either injuries or exhausting them.

For the Poles that matters little as they hang on to the slender thread of hope — there again Saganowski has already experienced a miracle as a motorcycle accident in the 1990s left the doctors fearing he would never walk again.

He defied that diagnosis and today he will hope that the Poles defy the odds.
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