Cracovia - Lech Poznań 1:1

Despite having a limited number of footballers fit to play on Saturday, Lech began the game really well. They dominated in the opening minutes and in the 2nd minute the team from Poznan had its first goal scoring chance. Majewski sent the ball to Jevtic who had a lot of free space around him, but the Swiss player was slightly slower than the goalkeeper and therefore he missed a chance to fire a shot. A couple of minutes later Sandomierski was forced to intervene again when Majewski decided to shoot at the goal. Luckily for the hosts, the ball hit the goalkeeper.

In certain periods of the match, the footballers from Poznan dominated the play completely. Not only did Lech build multiple offensive actions starting from the defensive line, but they also got opportunities to counterattack. In the 30th minute Jevtic dribbled around two defending players, but he waited too long before firing a shot. Pawlowski did it instead, but his attempt wasn’t on target. A while later Gajos attempted to surprise Cracovia’s goalkeeper, but Sandomierski intervened well and Lech was awarded a corner kick instead. While the team from Poznan struggled to place the ball in the net, Cracovia did it before halftime. Budzinski was left unmarked and he fired a strong shot from outside the box which Putnocky had no chance of stopping.

After halftime, Lech had nothing to lose and so they began the occupation of Cracovia’s penalty area. However, they came close to conceding another goal in the 52nd minute. This time Szczepaniak recovered the ball from Bednarek and found himself one-against-one with the goalkeeper. However, the offensive player decided to lob Putnocky instead of approaching the goal and the ball did not fall into the back of the net. Gajos responded with another good shot, but Sandomierski made no mistake and stopped the ball without problems.

Meanwhile, Lech tried every single method to break down Cracovia’s solid defensive line. Despite occupying the opponent’s half of the pitch for the majority of the game, Lech couldn’t place the ball in the net. Bjelica decided to strengthen the offensive line by sending a second striker on the pitch. That, however, did not bring desirable results and the team from Poznan still found it problematic to cause real trouble to Cracovia’s defenders.

Formella appeared for the last few minutes of the match. It was the winger’s first performance since two months. Nevertheless, the young player did not have a big impact on the match. Cracovia had one good goal scoring chance before Lech equalized in the 77th minute. Piatek failed to fire an accurate shot despite being in a great situation with an empty goal in front of him, but Nielsen did not fail when he got a chance of his own. Majewski’s cross from a free kick reached the defender and he put the ball in the net. Kownacki had an opportunity to set the score to 2:1, but his shot from a close distance was blocked at the last moment. Therefore, the two teams had to share points at halftime.

CRACOVIA - LECH POZNAŃ 1:1 (1:0)

Goals: Budziński (44) - Nielsen (77)

Yellow cards: Piątek, Nielsen

CRACOVIA: Grzegorz Sandomierski - Deleu, Piotr Polczak, Hubert Wołąkiewicz (48. Robert Litauszki), Tomasz Brzyski - Jakub Wójcicki (72. Paweł Jaroszyński), Marcin Budziński, Miroslav Covilo, Erik Jendrisek (46. Sebastian Steblecki) - Krzysztof Piątek, Mateusz Szczepaniak

LECH: Matus Putnocky - Tomasz Kędziora, Jan Bednarek, Lasse Nielsen, Tamas Kadar - Abdul Aziz Tetteh, Maciej Gajos (74. Dariusz Formella) - Darko Jevtić, Radosław Majewski, Szymon Pawłowski (63. Marcin Robak) - Dawid Kownacki (83. Paweł Tomczyk)

Attendance: 8117