PZPN

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the fans who supported us, even though we were eliminated from the tournament after just two matches. As it turned out, this group was still too difficult for us. Congratulations to the players that we managed to tie the match, but we are disappointed to be knocked out of the tournament", said Probierz. "It is more difficult to concentrate and create unity before a match, after which you will go home anyway. We talked a lot about continuing the good work. And now we will definitely cheer for the teams that made it out of this group".

The head coach also addressed this morning's news that he would continue in his role with the national team regardless of the result in Germany. "Thank you for the trust placed in me by the Polish Football Association. It's nice that the president, in the presence of the whole team, has announced that I will continue to manage the team. I would also like to thank the players and journalists with whom we worked nicely together for several days. It is a pity that the next stages of the EURO will be played with no participation of our team", said the coach, for whom the match against the French was the 11th in which he managed the Polish national team. Probierz achieved the result of 5 victories, 4 draws and 2 defeats, which were suffered at the EURO.

The second defeat, the one against the Austrians, was brought up again during Tuesday's conference after the clash with France. "In that encounter I didn't back down from the path I had taken at all. We had a problem because not all the players could play, and for those who had played less in clubs, such a tournament is associated with a huge energy expenditure. We made substitutions without being sure what might happen in a moment", admitted the coach.

Probierz, who, when taking over the national team in September, was given a rescue mission of qualifying for the European Championships, was also asked whether not getting through to the next stages was somehow calculated. "This tournament was very important for us, we wanted to play in it for as long as possible. Today we had very good moments in terms of the play. In the near future we would like to improve the organisation. However, the key is for the players to play regularly for their clubs. The players ran very well at the tournament, they were physically fit. The injuries that occurred were often a result of what was going on in the clubs. Our medical staff did their best to get everyone back on their feet", replied the head coach. Knowing that we had already been knocked out of the tournament, we trained the formation with Kuba Moder playing as a defensive midfielder. This is where the staff played a big role, showing him how to move in this position. At the end of today's game, it was already apparent that he was very tired and his leg was hurting because he couldn't play a longer pass. However, we didn't make substitutions so as not to give the referee an excuse to add more extra time.

The Polish national team showed on Tuesday that they can compete with the best teams in the world without giving up on playing with short passes. "What we showed today is the foundation. We played as equals with the World Cup runner-up", said Probierz.

Our rivals also had plenty of opportunities to score more goals, but they were stopped by Łukasz Skorupski, who replaced Wojciech Szczęsny in goal and took the award for best player of the match. Szczęsny's absence has sparked rumours that he will end his national team career. "Wojtek has not yet said that he is retiring. As for Łukasz, we made this decision out of respect for a player who, for eight years, was always ready, never complained and did his job. He always showed that he deserved to compete for a place in goal. I will definitely meet with Wojtek and talk about his future in the national team", said the Polish coach, closing the conference with words addressed to the footballer, who officially announced that he will no longer play for the national team: "I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank Kamil Grosicki, who is retiring from the national team".