Holding Midfield
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In a tense match bereft of quality, the result was decided by Poland’s main flank: the right one. With Poland needing a win it was odd Smuda selected the same team that set out to stop a highly efficient Russia side playing on the counter, starting the match in a 4-1-4-1 with Robert Lewandowski up top, Ludovic Obraniak and Jakub Blaszczykowski flanking him and three very deep-lying midfielders in Dariusz Dudka, Eugen Polanski and Rafal Murawski. Michal Bilek was forced to replace Tomas Rosicky with Daniel Kolar because of injury, playing in a 4-2-3-1 with Kolar behind Milan Baros with Petr Jiracek on the right. The Poles, as in their previous games, favoured the right flank – Lewandowski, Lukasz Piszczek and Kuba looked to position themselves high on the right and overload the Czechs there. Another interesting facet of Poland’s play was that Lewandowski would often drop deep to receive the ball while Kuba and Obraniak would make runs into central areas beyond him with the team shape almost looking like 4-3-1-2. However bar one or two half chances the Poles didn’t look like scoring. Because of Poland’s three holding midfielders the inevitable happened: the Czechs started to monopolise possession [...]
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