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[Blwe_torch]

WARSAW, April 23: Three decades after defeat by West Germany in an epic World Cup semifinal on a soggy Frankfurt pitch, Poland believe they have their best chance to beat the one heavyweight side they have never overcome.

In a golden era that yielded two World Cup third places, the Poles beat Johann Cruyff's Netherlands, Michel Platini's France, Alf Ramsay's England and Brazil. They have never beaten Germany, however, and would love to change history at June’s finals.

"The Germans may be favourites for the group but we believe this time we have a chance," centre back Tomasz Klos, 33, said. "We can see they have a new, young and inexperienced team. They are very strong all over the pitch and, like Germans do, they'll fight from the first minute to the last. But we have a different team to four years ago. We are hungry for success."

Led by Legia Warsaw hero Kazimierz Deyna, the Poles were the sensation of the 1974 finals, beating Argentina and Italy only to be denied a place in the final by Franz Beckenbauer's West Germany on a farcically waterlogged pitch.

Many say the match should have been postponed and that Austrian referee Erich Linemayr's decision to play gave the slower Germans more chance than they would have had on a dry surface. In the most famous image of the game still often shown on Polish television Deyna's goal-bound strike was halted by a puddle in the penalty area.

Yet few Poles hold a grudge, preferring to remember a tournament that opened a golden era for their domestic game. "It's true that it was closer to waterpolo than football but the Germans played on the same pitch as we did," said goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski, famed for the heroics months earlier against England that put the Poles into the finals.

"I don't bear any grudges. In the middle of communism, that World Cup made Poles believe we were equals to the best in the world. Before, kids would call themselves Pele, Cruyff or Moore. After it, they were Deyna, Lato or Szarmach."

Poland's post-war generation grew up deeply suspicious of their western neighbours, whose World War II occupation left one-fifth of its 30 million population dead, millions more homeless or exiled and the capital Warsaw razed to the ground.

http://sport.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1507051.cms