There is no doubt that both Robert Lewandowski and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are incredible athletes and amazing icons of European football, but only one of them will qualify in order to play in the 2022 World Cup which will be hosted by the country of Qatar.
Lewandowski plays for Poland’s national team who will face off against Sweden’s national football club on Tuesday, March 29th, 2022. The winner of this World Cup playoff final between Sweden and Poland will advance to the biggest international football tournament across the globe. The 2022 World Cup will be played from Monday, November 21st, 2022 through Sunday, December 18th, 2022.
The 40 – year – old Swedish striker, Ibrahimovic, could soon be playing the final international match of his illustrious football career especially if Sweden loses to Poland in Chorzow, Poland this Tuesday. Ibrahimovic ultimately decided to come out of international retirement early on in 2021 with the strong desire to play in the European Championship. Zlatan ended up having to eventually miss that international football tournament for his Swedish national team due to injury.
The 2022 World Cup will mark his last opportunity to participate in a professional international football tournament should his side beat Poland, and he is able to remain healthy which he is not 100 % healthy at the moment. Only recently returning from an Achilles tendon injury, Zlatan has been restricted to just 3 – late match appearances only as a substitute during Serie A contests for AC Milan this month, and it is obvious that Ibrahimovic is not ready to play as a starter versus Poland.
The 33 – year – old Lewandowski plays for and scores goals at ease with his current European football club of Bayern Munich, who is known as one of the best German pro teams at the moment.
If the strong striking Lewandowski does not make it into this year’s World Cup competition from the host nation of Qatar it is not beyond the realms of possibility for him to play in the next World Cup 4 – years down the road from now, but his Polish national team sometimes struggles to qualify for the World Cup tournaments as Poland has not played in the World Cup competition since way back in 2006.
Media Statements
“It’s a great question. We’ll evaluate that together. He was in full training now and we’ll talk to the medical team to set a plan. It’s partly about how the match will be. It is difficult to predict a match,” the head coach of the Swedish men’s national team, Janne Andersson, responded to a question last Monday when asked about the status of Zlatan Ibrahimovic for their upcoming qualifying match.
“You always have a basic plan, but you have to be flexible. What happens in the match? It is completely impossible to predict everything,” Andersson goes on to say. “Zlatan is a weapon for us, but he cannot play the whole match. I have a hard time seeing that he would not play now, considering that he played before the internationals. But we’ll see.”
“We began to analyze the Swedes some time ago and then we sped up that work because we learned that will not be playing Russia,” the head coach of Poland’s national team, Czeslaw Michniewicz, explained. “I know a lot about the Swedes — maybe even too much because sometimes I wake up in the morning and see the Swedes before my eyes.”
Sources:
Douglas, Steve. “Lewandowski, Ibrahimovic fighting to reach World Cup”. The Associated Press. March 28, 2022.