If you were watching this game closely enough at home and paying close attention to the far side of the pitch, you may have noticed that there were two tracks of dirt etched into the ground close to the touchline that almost resembled a number 10. A bit like when an elderly person in your local newspaper finds the image of Christ in a burned piece of toast, if you happened to notice it, it was impossible not to read this as a sign. What, if anything, did this mean?
What it meant, actually, was that this was the same area of the pitch where Poland’s players had been doing shuttle runs during their warm-up. While pounding their studs into the ground, they had really marked out two zeros, only the outside of the first was hidden by the darker shade of grass. It was a sign, in a way, but only a sign that while you can squint and strain to see the poetry in life, reality is often far more prosaic.
