• Quarter-finals: Portugal v Poland, Thursday, 11pm (UAE time)
Portugal ought to prepare themselves for a patient wait to open up Poland on Thursday in their Euro 2016 quarter-final tie. Germany could not score against the Poles in the group phase. Nor could Ukraine or Northern Ireland. It took a very special goal indeed – Xherdan Shaqiri's scissored volley – to inflict the first dent on a hermetic defence. Shaqiri's Switzerland, beaten via penalty-kicks at the last-16 phase, needed 82 minutes to penetrate the Polish barrier.
That brought to an end a run of well over seven hours of football without conceding a goal, an impressive, confidence-building statistic to arm Poland in their quarter-final as they take on the serial winner of Golden Shoes, Cristiano Ronaldo. That defensive solidity looks even better when you remember Poland lost their first-choice goalkeeper, Wojciech Szczesny, to injury after their first match.
• In pictures: Ronaldo, Portugal train | Lewandowski, Poland
But one thing Poland have always seemed capable of producing is good goalkeepers. The tradition goes back at least to Jan Tomaszewski, eccentric, elastic and a totem of the successful Poland teams of the 1970s. Szecesny's deputy through the two unblemished matches against Germany and Ukraine here in France, and through the long afternoon against Switzerland, was Lukasz Fabianski, of Swansea City. He and Szczesny are close, the latter having overtaken Fabianksi in the hierarchy at Arsenal, where they were colleagues for many years. Now, Szczesny has recovered from his thigh problem and the decision on who to select against Portugal has been a tricky one for coach Adam Nawalka.
• More: Richard Jolly on Portugal
The coach has opted for 26-year-old Szcezsny, who spent last season on loan at Roma, and was determined to perform well at these championships. Doing so would remind Arsenal, his parent club, of his credentials. It would also make amends for Euro 2012, when he was sent off in Poland’s opening match. That was one of several mishaps for the Poles, playing in front of their own supporters, during that tournament. They were underwhelming hosts. They did not win a match, and were spectators once the group phase was over.
Four years on, a far less brittle side has gained an authority, and indeed, as far as their Swiss opponents were concerned, a provocative arrogance. The Swiss players and fans took umbrage at the way several members of the Polish squad celebrated, including directly in front of the area where Switzerland fans were concentrated in Saint-Etienne. Szcezsny, who sat on the bench throughout the contest, was not among the most discreet of the celebrators.
One of the more discreet of their performers so far has been the captain, Robert Lewandowski. It's fair to report that this is both a surprise and perhaps an ominous strength of the Poles. Lewandowski, leading scorer in the Bundesliga this season with Bayern Munich, is Poland's superstar, their lodestar through impressive qualifying for Euro 2016. So far at the actual event, he is without a goal.
If he is frustrated by that, all the better, said Nawalka. “I feel certain that, sooner or later, things will open up for Robert, and that’s going to be a bad thing for one of our opponents,” said the coach. “He has been working incredibly hard for us. He creates space for other players, he draws the attention of defenders and frees up the rest.”
Poland's standout senior player so far has been Lewandowski's former team-mate at Borussia Dortmund, Jakob Blaszczykowski, now of Fiorentina, and scorer of two of their three goals in the tournament. Among the beneficiaries of the nervous attention paid by opponents to the tall Lewandowski has been Arkadiusz Milik, the junior striking partner, who came to France off the back of his own impressive season at Ajax. Milik, 22, represents the new guard, as do Milik's contemporaries – Piotr Zielinski and 20-year-old Bartosz Kapustka, effective off the bench and along the flanks.
Poland may need the energy of both today. There were symptoms of fatigue – at least until the vivid celebrations – into the second hour of their match against Switzerland. What they have yet to show, deep into the country’s best ever run at a European Championship, are signs of vertigo.
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