We look ahead to this Group D game at Euro 2024 in Berlin with our Poland vs Austria prediction and preview.
Poland vs Austria Stats: The Key Insights
- The Opta supercomputer predicts a win for Austria, with Ralf Rangnick’s side victorious in 43.5% of pre-match simulations.
- Poland have only won two of seven European Championship matches in which they scored first (D4 L1).
- Austria had more possession (52%), completed more passes (401 vs 390) and made more passes in the final third (137 vs 108) than France on Matchday 1, but only managed five shots in their 1-0 loss.
Poland and Austria meet at the Olympiastadion in Berlin on Friday looking for their first points of Euro 2024.
Poland lost their opening match of the tournament 2-1 against the Netherlands, but have never lost consecutive games within the same edition of the European Championship before.
Michal Probierz’s side held their own against the Dutch and even took the lead through an Adam Buksa header, only for goals from Cody Gakpo and Wout Weghorst to deny them.
Buksa is looking to become the first Poland player to score in each of his first two games at the European Championship. At major tournaments, the only Poles to do so previously are Grzegorz Lato and Andrzej Starmach at the 1974 World Cup against Argentina and Haiti.
It was the first time Poland had lost a Euros match when scoring the first goal of the game, but it was perhaps not a surprise that they didn’t hold on for a win. Poland have won just two of seven matches (D4 L1) at the European Championship when scoring first (29%), the lowest win rate of any nation to have scored first in more than five games since their first appearance at Euro 2008.
Poland were without star striker Robert Lewandowski against the Netherlands due to a thigh injury, and will be hopeful he can feature on Friday. Poland have only scored more than once in one of their 15 previous matches at the European Championship, doing so in a 3-2 defeat to Sweden at Euro 2020. That being said, they have found the net in each of their last seven games in the competition.
Lewandowski had played the full match in each of Poland’s 18 major tournament games between Euro 2012 and the 2022 World Cup. They haven’t gone consecutive tournament games without the 35-year-old featuring since he made his international debut in September 2008, but Lewandowski returned to team training on Wednesday, so could take the field in Berlin.
Austria were also narrowly beaten, 1-0 by France, which saw them fail to score for the first time in 18 games. The last time they went consecutive matches without a goal, one of those games was also against France back in September 2022.
Ralf Rangnick’s men impressed against Les Bleus, only undone by some Kylian Mbappé brilliance that led to the unfortunate Max Wöber heading the ball into his own net. Wöber became the first player in European Championship history to score an own goal, be yellow carded and substituted off all in the same game.
Austria had more possession (52%), completed more passes (401 vs 390) and made more passes in the final third (137 vs 108) than France on Matchday 1, but only managed five shots in total, their second-lowest in a Euros game after they had four attempts in a 0-0 draw with Portugal in 2016.
Poland vs Austria Head-to-Head
Poland and Austria’s only previous meeting at a major tournament was a 1-1 draw in the group stage of Euro 2008. That was the only point won by either team at the tournament.
Austria won three of their first five meetings with Poland (L2) between 1935 and 1994, but are now winless in their last five against them (D2 L3), with these all coming in competitive matches between 2004 and 2019.
Their last two meetings came in qualifying for Euro 2020, with Poland’s 1-0 in Vienna followed by a 0-0 draw in Warsaw.
Poland vs Austria Prediction
Austria are favourites to claim what would be a significant win in Berlin, coming out on top in 43.5% of the Opta supercomputer’s pre-match simulations.
Poland win 30.0% of the time, while a draw that wouldn’t be particularly helpful for either nation occurred in 26.5% of sims.
Looking at the Opta supercomputer’s Euro 2024 predictions overall, Austria are being given a 51.3% chance of making the last 16, while Poland’s chances are lower at 32.6%.
Poland vs Austria Squads
Poland
Lukasz Skorupski, Marcin Bulka, Wojciech Szczesny, Bartosz Bereszynski, Bartosz Salamon, Jakub Kiwior, Jan Bednarek, Pawel Dawidowicz, Sebastian Walukiewicz, Tymoteusz Puchacz, Bartosz Slisz, Damian Szymanski, Jakub Moder, Jakub Piotrowski, Kacper Urbanski, Kamil Grosicki, Nicola Zalewski, Piotr Zielinski, Przemyslaw Frankowski, Sebastian Szymanski, Taras Romanczuk, Adam Buksa, Karol Swiderski, Krzysztof Piatek, Michal Skóras, Robert Lewandowski.
Head coach: Michał Probierz
Austria
Heinz Lindner, Niklas Hedl, Patrick Pentz, Flavius Daniliuc, Gernot Trauner, Kevin Danso, Leopold Querfeld, Max Wöber, Philipp Lienhart, Phillipp Mwene, Stefan Posch, Alexander Prass, Christoph Baumgartner, Florian Grillitsch, Florian Kainz, Konrad Laimer, Marcel Sabitzer, Marco Grüll, Matthias Seidl, Nicolas Seiwald, Patrick Wimmer, Romano Schmid, Andreas Weimann, Marko Arnautovic, Maximilian Entrup, Michael Gregoritsch.
Head coach: Ralf Rangnick
Poland vs Austria Predicted Lineups
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