Colombia 🇨🇴 versus Poland 🇵🇱 – Group H Matchday 2 of 3

Kick off 1900 hours sharp at the Kazan stadium which is located in the Russian city of Kazan by a strange quirk of fate. It is in centralish Russia and is precisely 2,275 miles from my house by car. If you fancy going then head east through Clogland, Germany, Poland, Belarus into Russia barrel straight through Moscow and it’s on the left by the wheelie bins bedside Prospekt Khusaina Yamasheva.

Completed in 2013 this arena is home to champions league whipping boys Rubin Kazan and has a capacity of 45,000. Rubin Kazan are ranked 210th in Europe an impressive 160 places ahead of the wonderfully named Odds Ballklubb of Norway and only 53 ahead of the mighty Norwich City FC. That would be a great friendly eh? Norwich v Odds Ballklubb. OTBC

The stadium plays host tonight to two teams that have yet to get off the mark having both drawn a blank in their opening games; Los Cafeteros (The Coffee Growers) Colombian national team take on Biało-czerwoni (The White and Reds) AKA FC Poland or “Reprezentacja Polski w piłce nożnej” to be precise.

The road to Russia:

The Polish comfortably progressed through their group as winners which contained; Denmark, Romania, Montenegro, Kazakhstan and Armenia.

Polish hopes were dealt a blow when they lost 2-1 to Senegal and look to have a few things to sort out in their defence if they want to get out of this group as the can’t rely on Lewandoski.

Colombia finished 4th in the South American qualifiers and went into the tournament with high (geddit?) hopes of replicating their wonderful journey in Brazil in 2014 where they marched (geddit?) through to a quarter final with Brazil where their competition ended but they took the scalps of Greece, Cote D’Ivoire, Japan and Uruguay along the way lighting up the tournament with their colourful fans unique Colombian ‘salsa choque’ dancing celebration. Cha cha cha.

This time out started not so well despite being favourites to win this group as they lost their opening group match with Japan 1-2, playing all but three minutes of the game with ten men after Carlos Sanchez was awarded the fastest red card in World Cup history. The tool.

Head 2 Head

The two nations have met each other five times, with Poland winning the first two games while Colombia have won the past three matches.

One’s to watch:

Colombia

Colombia coach José Pekerman (lolf) is hoping to be able to call on a fit James Rodriguez. The midfielder, who won the Golden Boot as top scorer at the last World Cup with six goalazzos, has been struggling with a muscle injury and played the last 30 minutes of Colombia's opening loss to Japan as a substitute.

Another one to keep your mark one eyeballs trained on is another midfielder skipper and all-time top goalscorer and ace poacher Radamal Falcao, with 29 goals, he should have a point to prove as he missed out the last world cup jamboree in Brazil through injury.

Poland

Easy choice here with FC Bryan Munichs fox in the box , Robert Lewandoski in tip top form should get amongst the Clombian defenserers and add to his impressive national record of 55 goals in 96 starts.

Jakub Błaszczykowski is another one to look out for the Polish #4 is two caps short of the all time Polski cap record so the combative holding MF will be busting a nut to make sure that Poland progress.

Factoid Corner

On average age Poles Marry the youngest in EU

One third of Colombia is covered in Amazonian rainforest

Polish astronomer Nikolas Copernicus was the first person to postulate that the Earth wasn’t actually at the centre of the universe

The Colombian national anthem is played on the radio and television every day at 6am and 6pm by law. Imagine GSTQ being parped out twice a day.

Nearly 35% of Poles live abroad

Colombia is home to pink dolphins

Max Factor was founded by Polish chap called Maksymilian Faktorovicz

Bogota has one of the largest network of bicycle routes in the world

No 303 Squadron comprised entirely of Poles was the highest scoring RAF Squadron of the Battle of Britain.

Colombia is named after the intrepid explorer, navigator and somewhat unfortunate man that was Christopher Columbus, who sadly died not knowing he had actually discovered the great New World

The longest word in Polish is: Dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesiątdziewięćmiliardówdziewięćsetdziewięćdziesiątdziewięćmilionówdziewięćsetdziewięćdziesiątdziewięćtysięcydziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięcioletniego handy to remember for scrabble if you are in Poland, that’ll learn ‘em. It means 999,999,999,999 years old

So, get your Polish Sausage out and line up the marching powder, it's Col v Pol and both will be looking to dump the other one out.



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Posted By: Tombs, Jun 24, 18:07:32