Poland VS Albania

Poland welcome Albania for this EURO 2024 qualification Group E second round battle at PGE Narodowy in Warsaw early Tuesday morning Beijing time. For Albania, however, this is the first match. The other teams in this group are Czech Republic, Faroe Islands and Moldova. Following the Czechs' win over Poland in the first round they are slim favorites to win the group. However, I still see Poland as the best team in the group by pure class. Poland's FIFA ranking is 22th but this is unarguably slightly too high – I have them in the 24th place in my world power rating that reflects the teams' pure class with the best possible lineup. Albania, on the other hand, are in the 66th place which is moderately too high.. I have them in the 70th place in the power rating. Poland have a very clear edge in all areas of the game here. The odds of close to 1.60 offered for them to win are definitely too high. They lost to the Czech Republic in the first round away from home 1-3 as solid underdogs according to the bookies. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with their performance. However, the hosts played better than their normal level and got an incredibly good start to the game – with some luck – as Krejci scored already in the 1st minute and Cvancara added to the scoreline in the 3rd minute. The crowd was, understandably, ecstatic after this and offered an extra boost to the Czechs. Even so, Poland fought well in this game and did have 58% ball possession. They also recorded many more scoring attempts (11-8), total passes, completed passes and attacks (103-91). The hosts did record more in expected goals (xG) though - 1.89-1.59 to be precise.

Poland's record appearance holder and goalscorer, Barcelona's world-class star striker Robert Lewandowski will captain his country and might well be the man making the difference here! Albania have nothing even close to Robert's level in offense! However, Poland do heavily depend on him which is not necessarily a good thing in the long run or when facing the top-15 teams in the world. Luckily for the hosts he rarely has a bad on the pitch and is still very passionate about representing his home country. He has been very dangerous with Barcelona this season despite perhaps being past his absolute prime already.. The home advantage is substantial in international football – and the Polish people love their team. The hosts are surely annoyed by the loss in the first round and need all three points here.Poland qualified for the World Cup 2002 in Qatar – Albania did not. Poland played a relatively strong tournament and made it to the Playoffs. There they faced the reigning World Champions at the time, France, and did not have a genuine chance to win. This was, of course, no surprise to anyone. Poland were gigantic underdogs in this game on the betting market. Led by the amazingly good Mbappe, France won 3-1 and could have scored even more goals than the actual three. Albania, on the other hand, have declined recently, and have won just one of their latest 11 games!