Yet to start in the league under Jesse Marsch this season at Leeds United, Mateusz Klich runs the risk of finding himself out of the Poland squad for the upcoming World Cup.
This is what Przeglad Sportowy’s Isabel Koprowiak reckons in a column for the newspaper on Monday after the midfielder was left out of the squad to face Wales on Sunday.
She writes that the Leeds player has had ‘an incredible decline’ in the national team of late despite him seeming like ‘a footballer perfectly tailored to the idea of [Czeslaw] Michniewicz’s game’.
Klich ‘watched the game in Cardiff from the stands’ and was ‘not even a reserve’, with this latest decision from the manager meaning the 30-year-old may now ‘have doubts whether he will be in the 26-man squad’.
Just a few years ago, the Leeds man ‘was one of the most important figures’ at the heart of his country’s midfield, when Jerzy Brzęczek was in charge, which ‘coincided with his best times in Leeds’.
However, when the national team changed managers, first to Paulo Sousa and now to Michniewicz, ‘everything began to work against him’.
First, coronavirus kept him out of the squad, which followed with him not being called up for the games in March.
Then, the June international break saw him feature for 80 minutes from a possible 180, and nothing has improved.
All this comes at a time when Poland are having issues in the middle of the pitch, but it seems the manager has ‘decided that the Leeds player will not solve them’.
Since signing for Leeds back in 2017 from Twente FC, Klich has made 186 appearances for the Elland Road side, scoring 24 goals and assisting another 21.
