France vs Poland Preview

World Cup defending champions France will continue the defence of their world title this Sunday when they face Poland at the Al Thumama Stadium.

Les Bleus ended their group-stage games poorly falling to a narrow 1-0 loss to Tunisia. Despite this, they qualified for this round of the tournament after a 4-1 win over Australia and a 2-1 win over Denmark, making them top of their group.

Now, they will look to get a win here and book their place in the next round despite a flurry of injuries to their star men.

Speaking after their last game, France’s coach said: “We had some difficulties with the choices that I made. It should help us in four days. Some players were at risk [of injury] and we had just played two high-intensity matches. It allowed the substitutes to see the difference [in quality] in a World Cup match”.

“We’ve reached the objective, we’re going to recover, now begins a second competition.”

In 2018, France beat Argentina 4-3 at this stage and so they will fancy their chances of getting a great result against a Poland side they have beaten four times in the last eight head-to-head meetings (D3, L1).

Meanwhile, Poland will consider themselves lucky to still be in Qatar after surviving elimination from the group stage by the smallest of margins.

Czeslaw Michniewicz’s men went into their last game with Argentina needing to win or at least a draw to guarantee that they progress to the knockout stage ahead of Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

However, they were beaten 2-0 by Lionel Messi’s side, yet qualified for the knockout thanks to a better goal difference than Mexico who beat Saudi Arabia 2-1 in the other Group C fixture.

Having found themselves in this position, Poland will hope to make the most of their opportunity against the reigning world champions.

Given their strength in defence having kept four clean sheets in their last five games, they will fancy their chances of winning this game. However, they have to be in their best shape in attack having failed to score in four of their last ten games. They have also failed to score in five of their last seven games against France and might struggle to net here again.