His teams are rarely pretty but certainly effective a recipe that only a week ago brought

His teams are rarely pretty but certainly effective, a recipe that only a week ago brought success for Tottenham Hotspur on the same Wembley turf in the Worthington Cup final."All the players respect him enormously," said Manusz-ewski. "He can be very strict but he's also a father figure to the players. Instead, Wojcik drafted in the bulk of the squad he led to the silver medal at the 1992 Olympic Games, including Adamczuk. If he starts today, and he should, the Osasuna forward will need to be watched: he has scored eight goals in only 12 internationals.The main inspiration behind Poland's recent revival, however, is undoubtedly Wojcik, who discarded a number of the old guard when he took over and retained only four of the squad that lost 2-1 on Poland's last visit to Wembley two and half years ago. Such enthusiasm was in stark contrast to the dark days of Polish football that followed the end of communism and state sponsorship. "Every transition needs time," said Roman Manuszewski, the Polish liaison officer "All teams go through patchy times We have no stars.

But some of them could be stars of the future."Another key factor in the renaissance of Polish football is that most of the squad now play overseas, including Miroslaw Trzeciak, last season's Polish player of the year. Everyone knows about our poor record at Wembley and what the game means, especially to England."Such is the renewed interest in Polish football that, 48 hours before they left Warsaw bound for Luton, over 10,000 fans, including the prime minister, turned out for the farewell training session. "There has been nothing else in the papers and on television. Significantly, too, they are unbeaten in nine matches this season, including their opening two Euro 2000 qualifiers.Next week's home game with Sweden, the second part of a double-header, may be more crucial to the Poles than this afternoon's little spat but they are eager to put themselves in the Wembley shop window."Everyone in Poland has been counting down the days until Wembley," said Dundee's Dariusz Adamczuk, who is expected to be on the bench when Wojcik names his team this morning. The Poles may be lacking in star names but they play as a unit and looked extremely accomplished technically when they trained in the drizzle at Boreham Wood a couple of hours after their arrival on Thursday. Trawl through the Polish squad and you won't find a single name with which most of us could identify. There is, for instance, no Polish prodigy like Michael Owen, no midfield equivalent to David Beckham and no out- an-out goalscorer like, at his best, Alan Shearer. Even Poland's most dangerous forward, Sylwester Czereszewski, who scored twice in the 3-0 win in Bulgaria that opened the Poles' qualifying campaign, injured his knee last weekend and is out after already undergoing surgery, while Marek Citko, for whom Blackburn Rovers offered a king's ransom not so long ago, has been out for 18 months with an achilles tendon injury.But don't be fooled.

Polish football may be suffering from an internal political crisis back home but all that would be forgotten if their unheralded players ruin the eagerly awaited start of the temporary Keegan era at Wembley this afternoon. THEY LOOK supremely fit, they are certainly hungry and in coach Janusz Wojcik they have a motivator every bit as enthusiastic as Kevin Keegan. And it would not be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that the manager's dreams are in Shearer's hands.SHEARER'S RECORD FOR CLUB AND COUNTRYSeason *League League *England Englandapps goals apps goals1998-99 (Newcastle) 25 10 4 21997-98 (Newcastle) 17 2 8 41996-97 (Newcastle) 31 25 7 61995-96 (Blackburn) 35 31 12 51994-95 (Blackburn) 42 34 6 21993-94 (Blackburn) 40 31 4 11992-93 (Blackburn) 21 16 3 11991-92 (Southampton) 41 13 3 11990-91 (Southampton) 36 4 - -1989-90 (Southampton) 26 3 - -1988-89 (Southampton) 10 0 - -1987-88 (Southampton) 5 3 - -Totals 329 172 47 22* Includes substitute appearances. Just over two years ago, Shearer wore the captain's armband at Wembley for the first time and scored the two goals that wrested back the initiative from today's opponents "Alan is a manager's dream," Dave Merrington said yesterday. I hope it's me, but if it's someone else, great."Better, perhaps, that it should be him. Facing a vital match under new management, a patched-up England need the leadership of an inspirational striker. "He's not blessed with tremendous pace, but he shifts it a yard and whips it in That's very difficult to deal with.

It enables the strikers to gamble, because you know that eight times out of nine it's going to come in I just hope and pray that someone's on the end of them. Time will tell."England's attacking players have spent a considerable amount of time this week practising crosses from both wings, and Shearer was eager to join the queue to praise David Beckham's service from the right "He's the best crosser of the ball I've ever seen," he said. "We haven't discussed anything, but we've both been around, and we know each other's game There are certainly goals there. "That's what they've always done in the past," he said, "but we've always managed to score against them."He and Cole, he pointed out, had only played together twice, when Cole came on a substitute against France and in a testimonial. "I've got a record of 12 goals in 18 games as captain." Poland, he said, are certain to deploy two man-markers and a sweeper to counter his new partnership with Andy Cole. "I've scored consistently for the national XI anyway," he said with a level gaze at his questioner. A certain sensitivity to his current status was evident yesterday in his swift response when he was asked whether he looked forward to increasing his scoring rate for the national team.

"He's got a mind of his own, and it's a strong one."Yet the true cost of that injury to the ankle and fibula can be gauged by the fact that since his recovery Shearer has no longer been viewed as a candidate for a big move to Italy or Spain, something that he once used to speak of as an enjoyable prospect for the later years of his career. Nowadays it is the Anelkas and Shevchenkos, much younger men, who are attracting the interest of the super-rich clubs of Milan, Turin, Barcelona and Madrid. Keegan also remarked that Arthur Cox, his faithful lieutenant, had pointed out the similarities between the two of them "He's just like you," Cox had said. "When the match was over," he remembered this week, "a helicopter came down to whisk him off and I remember looking up and thinking: `I'll never see his like again.'"Years later, in the foreword to Shearer's autobiography, Keegan described the man he had brought back to Newcastle as "the outstanding English player of his era by a mile". I'm sure he'll be bouncing ideas off Alan, and that Alan will respond."Shearer was a ball-boy at St James' Park on the day Keegan played his last game for Newcastle. He's probably got a very good relationship with Kevin Keegan, who wants his team to express themselves off the pitch as well as on it.

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