Poland 1-2 Slovakia: Red Card and Own Goal for Poland

Poland played Slovakia in their first game of the 2020 UEFA Euro campaign in St Petersburg, Russia.

Róbert Mak’s shot hit the post and bounce off Wojciech Szczęsny to give Slovakia the lead in the 18^th minute. This was the first own goal by a goalkeeper in the UEFA Euro competition history.

The first half ended with Slovakia playing on the front foot and giving the Polish players a hard time to provide a chance for their talisman, Robert Lewandowski, to score.

Poland has never scored more than one goal in the entirety of the European Championship history, which they needed to overcome a jubilant Slovakian team.

Within a minute of the restart of the second half, a cut back to Karol Linetty led to a miss kick but it was enough to beat the Slovakian goalkeeper in the 46^th minute of the game.

The game in the second half flipped with Poland playing much better and putting Slovakia on the back foot.

Mateusz Klich’s cut back to Linetty unfortunately did not yield the same result with the shot lacking power for the Newcastle goalkeeper, Martin Dúbravka, to save comfortably.

However, in the 62^nd minute, Grzegorz Krychowiak received his second yellow card of the game after in the first half, unnecessarily grabbing a Slovakian player who went past him.

This led to the belief changing in the Slovakian camp, who not long ago would have been satisfied with one point.

Slovakia pushed on the second goal with Milan Škriniar scoring from a corner after having the space to control the ball in the box at the 69^th minute.

Poland had a few decent chances in the last 20 minutes with Jan Bednarek coming close. However, Slovakia stayed tight and won all three points.

The most impressive feat of Slovakia was keeping Robert Lewandowski quiet after a record-breaking season at Bayern Munich. However, just like at the 2018 World Cup, Poland failed to win their first game.

Source of Image: UEFA 2020 EURO Twitter