Leo’s Kindergarten: Call Ups For The August Training Camp.

Great, finally some ‘confirmed’ names to discuss. Leo Beenhakker called up 20 youngsters from the Polish league for the upcoming training camp in Wronki where he’s to judge first handedly the amount of talent that they possess. Surprises, as always, as there are two guys who don’t even have a single 1st division game under their belt.

First, lets’s have at Leo’s choices:

Goalkeepers: Sebastian Przyrowski (Polonia Warsaw), Adam Stachowiak (Odra Wodzislaw)

Defenders: Jakub Rzezniczak, Przemyslaw Wysocki (both Legia Warsaw), Tomasz Jodlowiec (Polonia Warsaw), Mariusz Pawelec (Slask Wroclaw), Tomasz Lisowski (Widzew Lodz), Piotr Polczak (Cracovia)

Midfielders: Radoslaw Majewski (Polonia Warsaw), Piotr Kuklis (Widzew Lodz), Tomasz Bandrowski, Slawomir Peszko (both Lech Poznan), Adam Danch, Michal Pazdan (both Gornik Zabrze), Maciej Rybus (Legia Warsaw), Szymon Pawlowski (Zaglebie Lubin)

Strikers: Bartlomiej Dudzic, Marcin Krzywicki (both Cracovia), Robert Lewandowski (Lech Poznan), Tomasz Zahorski (Gornik Zabrze)

First of all, these are only Polish league players. Secondly, Wisla Krakow’s players couldn’t have been included as they play a CL qualifier at the same time. Finally, the call ups list quite resembles the talents list that I mentioned some time ago, apart from the fact that the oldest players were eliminated (Iwanski, Pitry). I quite like the direction that Leo has chosen (youngsters) and I hope some of those players really impress him during training. I would like to divide this bunch into four groups:

1 Those quite close to the ‘actual’ team: Majewski, Pazdan, Zahorski. Gornik guys took part in Euro and Majewski almost did. I think we’ll see them, especially Zahorski and Majewski, playing a ’supporting role’ in the qualifiers.

Some nice touches from Majewski

What Zahorski is capable of

2 Those watched by Leo for almost a year now: Pawelec, Lisowski, Kuklis. All already with caps to their names; Leo must see something in them that nobody else does. Those players certainly can’t be called league’s top performers (Lisowski and Kuklis from Widzew will even have to play in the 2nd div).

Hmm, maybe that’s why Kuklis is still in Leo’s notebook

3 Those who earned the call up through good league and/or U-21 performance: Przyrowski, Stachowiak, Rzezniczak, Jodlowiec, Polczak, Bandrowski, Rybus, Pawlowski, Danch, Peszko, Lewandowski. The only surprise here for me is Peszko. He spent last season in Wisla Plock (2nd div) and only earned a transfer to Lech this summer. I don’t really think that Leo watched a lot of 2nd div football last year so his call up is probably due to a good form in friendlies (and natural speed that he possesses). Lewandowski, even though he is yet to debut in 1st div, has been widely tipped for a call up for 2-3 weeks now. Other than that, guys who are considered future internationals for Poland.

Nice moves by Pawlowski

That’s where Rybus’ career started

4 WTF?: Wysocki, Dudzic, Krzywicki. Leo wouldn’t be himself without a fair portion of surprise. Wysocki played only 4 times in the Polish league and is certainly not considered a starter for Legia this season. Dudzic had a couple of good games for Cracovia last term, but he definetely wasn’t a consistent performer. As for Krzywicki, I only know that he moved from 3rd div (where he scored 10 goals in 27 games) this summer and played for our youth team. The reason for this call up may be the fact that he’s 200cm high, a ‘Polish Crouch’ is what they call him. I’ve never seen him so I can’t confirm it; I’m waiting for his robot dance in the league.

What do you think about the call ups?

Other news: Adam Kokoszka signed a 5 year long contract with Empoli. Everything looks nice, but Wisla Krakow rejects to accept that. We’re in for some ‘Uefa involved’ action.

Racing Santander wants to exchange Ebi Smolarek for Augustin Binya from Benfica. In other words, they are desperately trying to get rid of Ebi.