The Polish national team play Andorra in their final test before the Euro 2012 this Saturday. Franciszek Smuda’s men will play the lowly international ranked side at the Pepsi Arena in Warsaw, home to local T-Mobile Ekstraklasa outfit Legia Warsaw.

Much like Spain playing Poland before the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa (and winning 6-0), this match is very much nothing but a pure morale booster for us. So who better for us to play against and be guaranteed a win but bakers, mailmen, students, etc.

It’s expected Smuda will play a mixture of starting and reserve players against Andorra. It will be a good test to see some more from players like Adam Matuszczyk and Pawel Brozek, who despite making the final 23-man squad did so with heavy criticism mostly due to their recent form.

It’s likely that Smuda will be cautious about playing some of his key players like Poland captain Jakub Blaszczykowski. If we take a look back at the UEFA EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland, Blaszczykowski picked up a pretty bad injury in training camp which saw him being ruled out from the group stages. Lukasz Piszczek, who played as an attacking player back then was called up in his place. Without Blaszczykowski our team looked pretty stale on the offensive (with the obvious exception of the brilliant Roger Guerreiro) and it was one of the reasons the Bialo-czerwoni crashed out of the group stages. Clearly no one wants a repeat of this happening, especially not on home soil, so Smuda will be wary of who he plays on Saturday. Starters will start the game, and by half time will be replaced by the reserve players. No sense in having them play the entire game.

Andorra will only have semi-professionals playing for them, so they shouldn’t cause much harm even to our sketchy at times defense. I see Smuda playing Boenisch in the back line for certain. The more matches the better for a guy whose barely played any games for his club this season due to injury.

Not much to say about this game, other than I’m sure everyone in the country is expecting a clean sheet and high score line for the Poles. If Spain was able to defeat Poland 6-0 before the World Cup, should we expect Poland to do any less against Andorra?

Whether that happens is another story. However, regardless the score line this is a must win for Poland, if it’s not that defeats the whole purpose of booking a game against Andorra.

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