Insane Clown's Posse: Poland vs Greece Pre-match Thoughts

This evening, hosts Poland face Greece in the opening fixture; a meeting not likely to get neutrals fired up, but a game which promises so many awkward syllables in players' names that Clive Tyldesley should have been made to spend a month in a paint stripped room with Geoffrey Rush and a phonograph just to get through it. 

Neither side will play expansive football.  

Starless Greece are expected to resort to the highly organised hod carrying which won them the tournament in 2004. Poland, however, do have players to watch. In the outfield there's the German based trio of Lukasz Piszczek, "Kuba" Blaszczkowski and Robert Lewandowski, who had superb seasons for Dortmund laying waste to Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. Striker Lewandowski was named the league's Player of the Season; a supreme feat in a year which featured strong showings from the likes of Gomez and Götze. Poland also have the accomplished Wojciech Szczesny in goal. Last season the Arsenal keeper matured and he no longer finds himself outfoxed by his own defenders in the six yard area.  

To the English, memories of Poland's national team recall misty Wednesday nights at the old Wembley. Throughout the 1990s, playing Poland was like having to get through the first level of a video game. England were perpetually straining to edge out Poland in some qualifying group or other. And then, following a pasting in the summer finals, needing to go back and beat them all over again in the Autumn.

Former "clown" Tomaszewski

Each of these games would be haunted by the spectre of England's failure to beat the Poles in 1973 on the mistiest Wembley night of all—Sir Alf's final match. That night the Poles frustrated England to the point of ruin, and Brian Clough's pre-game denunciation of Polish goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski as "a clown" gained infamy on a par with Neville Chamberlain's "Peace In Our Time" speech. 

Forty years on, and Tomaszewski is an elected politician representing the 'Law and Justice party' in Poland, an insane clown's posse so right-wing that David Cameron's Tories were advised to "study past statements" before sharing a platform with them at a 2009 conference. Nationalist Tomaszewski refuses to watch the Polish team and berates players with foreign sounding names as not being "true Poles". 

Recent statements by Tomaszewski have done little to dispel pre-tournament fears that Polish football is beset with zenophobia and racism. But for their Greek opponents tonight, a bit of nationalism of the Tomaszewski kind is just clowning around. Yesterday a Greek fascist punched a female political rival in the face on live TV during a round-table debate.  

Anyway, predictions:

Poland 2 Greece 0. Sixteen people getting punched in the face by fascists. 

For the other game, I've got Russia 1 Czech Republic 1. Mildly entertaining draw.