Poland

Poland were in England’s qualifying group and finished second. They led the group most of the way, before being overtaken by England on the last day. Most second places went into the playoffs, but Poland went straight through as one of the two 'best second place' sides.

Poland's World Cup profile continues below

Poland's manager, Pawel Janas, is very popular with the Polish fans, even more so after their surprise, and relatively easy qualification. He is a man who keeps his private life very hidden from the press, a very different attitude to the previous Polish manager, Jerzy Engel.

Poland have twice come third in the World Cup - in 1974 and 1982. But their famous keeper, Jerzy Dudek, insists this isn’t good enough, saying: "We want to make new history".

Poland have good consistency. They lost home and away to England but won very other match. They are a team built for scoring goals, but sometimes this leaves them looking a bit empty at the back.

Having said that, they managed to keep a clean sheet in their last friendly before the World Cup when they beat Croatia 1-0.

Going into the World Cup, Poland were ranked 23rd in the world, and they looked to have a good draw to progress to the second round, but they got off to a poor start losing 2-0 to Ecuador and then fell 1-0 to a late strike by Germany.

Poland therefore failed to get into the last 16 in spite of winning their third game, beating Costa Rica 2-1.

Poland World Cup squad by shirt number: 1 Artur Boruc 2 Mariusz Jop 3 Seweryn Gancarczyk 4 Marcin Baszczynski 5 Kamil Kosowski 6 Jacek Bak 7 Radoslaw Sobolewski 8 Jacek Krzynowek 9 Maciej Zurawski 10 Miroslaw Szymkowiak 11 Grzegorz Rasiak 12 Tomasz Kuszczak 13 Sebastian Mila 14 Michal Zewlakow 15 Ebi Smolarek 16 Arkadiusz Radomski 17 Dariusz Dudka 18 Mariusz Lewandowski 19 Bartosz Bosacki 20 Piotr Giza 21 Ireneusz Jelen 22 Lukasz Fabianski 23 Pawel Brozek

Poland entry written by Ben Rosenbaum