The Polish community in Ireland was celebrating last Saturday after Poland booked their place for the Euro 2008 finals with a 2–0 home win over Belgium at the Slaski Stadium in Chorzow.
The result guarantees the Poles qualification for the European Championships for the first time ever, irrespective of how they performed in the final group game against Serbia in Belgrade last night.
Racing Santander striker Euzebiusz Smolarek took advantage of poor defending to send the 50,000-strong home crowd into ecstasy with a goal on the stroke of half-time against the Belgians.
And the same player doubled his nation’s advantage four minutes after the interval with a sublime lob over stranded Belgium keeper Stijn Stijnen.
Smolarek netted a hat-trick in Poland’s previous 3–1 win over Kazakhstan, but despite notching 5 goals in two matches, the modest 26-year-old insisted following the match that he is no hero.
“The whole team won the game and everybody worked hard for this win,” he said. “I am happy that I did not slow down after the 3 goals against Kazakhstan and today I confirmed my good form.”
Polish coach Leo Beenhakker admitted that qualifying for Euro 2008 was one of the most satisfying achievements of his entire career, adding that he was delighted that they had made so many people in Poland happy.
Dutch-born Beenhakker was informed by the Polish Football Federation last week that he will remain national team coach until November 2009 at the least.
That will mean that the 65-year-old will be at the helm for the qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and his contract could be extended if the Poles qualify.
Polish captain Maciej Zurawski told Polish state television after Saturday’s game that they were very proud to have reached their goal with one game to spare.
“I take a huge satisfaction from being captain of this team. Every player who has played in this qualifying campaign deserves praise,” he said. “Sometimes we had good games, sometimes less so, but this is football. The aim, however, was always the same and we have just reached our goal. This is the most important thing.”
Meanwhile, the Polish community in Ireland were glued to live coverage of the game on Setanta Sports on Saturday night and the Eircom League of Ireland’s sole Polish referee, Tomazs Supercyncki, admitted that it was tense.
“It was a fantastic result for Poland and the Polish community in Ireland are thrilled that we will be playing in the European Championships next year,” he said. “We have qualified for the World Cup before, but this is the first time we have qualified for the European Championships and I think we will do well because we did very well to emerge from a very tough group.”
Portugal, Norway or Serbia can join Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Romania and Holland at next summer’s European Champ-ionships. Austria and Switz-erland qualify automatically by virtue of being the host nations.
England had an opportunity to secure their place with a win or a draw against Croatia last night (the result was not available at press time) while Turkey and Norway are in contention for the second qualification berth in Group C. Sweden and Northern Ireland are vying for second spot in Group F.
The English were granted a massive reprieve when Israel beat Russia 2–1 at the Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, thanks to an injury time winner from Omer Golan.
Meanwhile, while Poland have already qualified, a positive result against Serbia will have a bearing on the seedings for the World Cup qualifiers. As of press time, however, it remained to be seen whether the match would go ahead, as the Serbs’ clash with Kazakhstan was called off twice last weekend due to heavy snow in Belgrade.
