Defeated: Poland’s Robert Lewandowski reacts after the final whistle in the Olympic Stadium.
Photo: dpa/Sören Stache
On Friday evening, Berlin had its first final; two losing teams from the first match day met in the Olympic Stadium. The rule for both teams was: it was forbidden to lose – for Robert Lewandowski’s Poland as well as for the Austrians trained by Ralf Rangnick. The stands of the venerable Olympic Stadium were colored in red and white, the traditional colors of both the Bialo-Czerwony and the ÖFB team. At the end, the fans of the Alpine republic sang their songs. Your favorites defeated Poland with a clear 3:1 (1:1) and can hope to reach the round of 16. For the Poles, however, the tournament is almost over. Their last group game against France has become meaningless for them after the 0-0 draw in the other group game in the evening between the French and the Dutch.
In the stadium oval, the fans from Poland had the upper hand vocally from the start. Surely half of the 69,455 voted for “Polska”. However, hopes were somewhat dampened as the team’s star was once again missing from the starting line-up: Robert Lewandowski, 35, attacker from FC Barcelona, had, contrary to all announcements, still not properly healed from a torn muscle fiber in his thigh and instead took a seat on the bench for the time being. On the Austrian side, their superstar David Alaba sits there every time at this tournament. Unlike Lewandowski, the injured Real Madrid defender is only there as moral support.
»The team that wins the game has every chance of progressing afterwards. A draw doesn’t really help either of them,” Austria’s German head coach Rangnick told his players. And the team acted accordingly from the start. The Austrians, led by record international player Marko Arnautović, started strongly. They pressed early and quickly got the better of the surprised Poles. After nine minutes it was 1-0 for Austria thanks to central defender Gernot Trauner. The 32-year-old from Feyenoord Rotterdam unstoppably headed a cross from the left into the left corner. Rangnick and his teammates on the bench cheered.
It was a wake-up call for the Poles. Playmaker Piotr Zieliński from SSC Napoli tried to reorganize his squad. The Eastern Europeans now acted more venomously and attacked earlier, while Austria shifted down a gear. After half an hour of play, the equalizer was logically achieved. Striker Krzysztof Piątek, who once played for Hertha in the Berlin Olympic Stadium (the 32 million transfer was considered an absolute bad buy), grabbed the ball in the six-yard box after a rebound from Gernot Trauner and pushed the ball into the net to make it 1-1 (30th). He celebrated with a pistolero gesture.
Poland was back, but the game petered out. There were a surprising number of bad passes on both sides, even after the break. Things got loud again in the 60th minute when Poland coach Michał Probierz finally substituted Robert Lewandowski to the cheers of the Polish supporters.
But Lewandowski was unable to act as a savior. After just three minutes he received a yellow card for a foul in a header duel, and in the 66th minute he had to watch as Team Austria pulled away to 2-1: Leipzig’s Christoph Baumgartner pushed the ball from the 16th after a pass from Graz substitute Alexander Prass meters past Polish keeper Wojciech Szczęsny.
When the Juventus goalkeeper caught the onrushing Marcel Sabitzer off his feet in the 77th minute, the decision was finally made: Marko Arnautović confidently sank the penalty in the bottom right corner – 3-1. Poland didn’t succeed anymore, Austria even had the chance to make it 4-1 on the counterattack: Szczęsny spectacularly cleared a left-footed shot from Stefan Posch into the touchline (84′), but was lucky when the unmarked Konrad Laimer missed the goal from ten meters. When the final whistle blew, striker Robert Lewandowski stood on the pitch with a frozen expression. There is nothing left for the exceptional footballer to achieve in the national team.
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