The Polish sniper chose the wrong corner

The match in Group C between the national teams of Mexico and Poland brought the second consecutive goalless draw at the World Cup in Qatar. And the most interesting and most important episode of the meeting was the penalty kick in the second half and the victory of the Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa in a duel with the phenomenal Polish sniper Robert Lewandowski.

The second match of the day in group C, in contrast to the one that ended a few hours before it, refused to entertain with something really interesting for a long time. Everything in it was somehow fresh and understandable.

The Mexican national team in temperament, in the desire to aggravate the match, was head and shoulders above, but there was no sense in such superiority. The Mexican game all the time inexorably rolled to the right flank – to where the mad Irving Lozano, the most dangerous and cunning footballer in the current composition of his team, rushed about. But the Poles, of course, were ready for such a roll. Bartosz Bereszynski was closely following the lively Lozano. Far from all duels, he prevailed, but Bereshinsky was insured by partners.

The first more or less serious moment for the Mexicans matured only in the middle of the first half – of course, to the right of the Polish penalty area. He hung, however, not Lozano, but Hector Herrera, but it turned out still not bad. Ernesto Vega, in any case, managed to hit his head in such a way that he made the Mexican sectors in the stands perk up, apparently thinking that this was a sign: the opponent’s defense was about to crackle. And she didn’t crack.

The game of the Polish national team surprised me with some archaism, or something. In modern football, you rarely see when a team that considers itself quite solid completely ignores such an option as pressing. Yes, at least symbolic and periodic.

The Poles have always preferred a collective retreat to the rear in the hope of launching an attack from the depths over pressure. The result of this tactic was sad. The ideal Polish problems were illustrated by the statistics of their leader, Robert Lewandowski. During the first half, the best striker in world football, which, in theory, they should have tried to load in full, delivered one vague shot on goal and gave four, in fact, useless passes to the partners. Well, the ball in the zone for which Lewandowski was responsible only occasionally got to. Polish attacks stalled, as a rule, in the middle of the field.

That the Poles can bring the refusal to bet on passivity, demonstrated the episode that arose immediately after the break. The Polish national team nevertheless integrated pressure into their game and soon finally delivered the ball to Robert Lewandowski so that he could enter the penalty area with him. Lewandowski bulldozed past Hector Moreno, who, stopping the Pole, grabbed him by the T-shirt. VAR, of course, saw this act by Moreno, and referee Chris Beath interpreted it as a foul and appointed a penalty kick.

Lewandowski himself took the penalty, but it turned into a triumph not for a Polish scorer, but for an experienced Mexican goalkeeper. Guillermo Ochoa pulled off a grand stunt. Twitching to his right corner, he forced his opponent to shoot at the opposite. Lewandowski had no idea that he had been swindled.

The point is that Ochoa’s move was false. In fact, he decided to jump into the same corner that he had seduced the Pole. Ochoa parried the penalty, and his admiring goalkeeping team put pressure on the Polish defense much tighter than before.

Soon it was the turn of the Polish goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny to rescue his team. And he did not lose his head when Enri Martin suddenly appeared in front of him, already reacting to a long-range strike, and tried to send the ball into the corner with his head.

In general, everything seemed to spin and spin. But happiness was short – ten minutes, no more. The game gradually returned to the mode in which it was in the first half, with passionate and unlucky Mexicans and neat Poles, who do not really want to climb forward. This regime did not promise anything but 0:0, which confused the alignment in the quartet to the limit.

Alexey Dospekhov