Robert Lewandowski appears to have won his battle of wills with Michal Probierz after quitting international duty, with Poland’s manager resigning.

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• Talismanic forward vowed not to play under coach
• Manager has decided to step down from role
• Lewandowski could now grace 2026 World Cup

• WHAT HAPPENED?

  After being informed that the captain’s armband would be passed to Inter midfielder Piotr Zielinski, superstar Barcelona striker Lewandowski revealed he would no longer be making himself available for selection.

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  THE BIGGER PICTURE

  The 36-year-old frontman said: “Taking into account the circumstances and a loss of trust in the coach, I have decided to resign from playing for the Poland national team for as long as he remains in charge. I hope I will still have another chance to play again for the best fans in the world.”

• DID YOU KNOW?

  Lewandowski has been granted that wish, with Probierz – who took charge of the Poland national team in September 2023 – announcing he will be stepping down, clearing the path for a man with 158 caps and 85 goals for his country to return.

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  WHAT MICHAL PROBIERZ SAID

  Probierz said in a statement released by the Polish FA: “I have come to the conclusion that in the current situation, the best decision for the good of the national team will be my resignation from the position of coach. Performing this function was the fulfilment of my professional dreams and the greatest honour of my life.

  “I would like to thank all my co-workers, employees of the Polish Football Association. I could always count on you. Thank you for trusting the president and board of the Polish Football Association.

  “Of course, I would like to thank all the footballers whom I had the pleasure of meeting on this path. I will keep my fingers crossed for all of you, because the national team is our common national asset. I would also like to thank our wonderful fans. You are with us through thick and thin. Wherever the national team played, your support was heard.”

  The Polish FA added that they would “like to thank coach Michal Probierz for his cooperation and commitment in managing the national team, wishing him success in his future professional career”.

Jobe Bellingham sent a message to the Borussia Dortmund fans after making his debut for his new team at the Club World Cup on Tuesday.

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Bellingham made his BVB debut on TuesdayCame on a substitute on the hour markFelt 'very proud' about the occasionFollow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱WHAT HAPPENED?

Dortmund's latest signing Bellingham followed in the footsteps of his elder brother, Jude, and made his debut for the German giants in the side's opening game of the Club World Cup on Tuesday. While the game against Brazilian side Fluminense ended in a 0-0 draw, the ex-Sunderland starboy sent a message to his fans and expressed how proud he was to represent Dortmund.

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The 19-year-old completed his record-breaking move from Sunderland for a fee of €33 million (£28m/$38m) and joined his new team-mates for training in the United States to prepare for the ongoing Club World Cup. Bellingham, as expected, came on as a substitute in the 59th-minute, after head coach Niko Kovac had explained why the English midfielder will not be starting games right off the bat.

WHAT JOBE BELLINGHAM SAID

Taking to Instagram, Bellingham posted a number of photos from his Dortmund debut and wrote: "Very proud to have my debut in black & yellow. Big games coming up.. Just the beginning."

Getty Images SportWHAT NEXT FOR JOBE BELLINGHAM?

Bellingham will be expected to play a similar role off the bench in Dortmund's next game, in which they take on South African heavyweights Mamelodi Sundowns on Saturday, June 21.

Visitors make most of batting day after poignant tribute to Josh Baker

ECB Reporters Network10-May-2024

A Gareth Roderick century left Worcestershire in a commanding position after day one of their Vitality County Championship with Kent at Canterbury.The visitors were 308 for 5 at stumps, with Roderick hitting 117 from 281 balls, after the former Kent 2nd XI player Kashif Ali had given them a platform with 72. Adam Hose was unbeaten on 50 at stumps, reaching his half-century with a single off Nathan Gilchrist in the final over of the day.Matt Parkinson took 2 for 79, but it was largely a torpid day in the field for Kent, who struggled to make anything happen on a benign pitch until Joey Evison claimed late two wickets to end the day with figures of 2 for 39.The day began in sombre fashion, with an emotive minute’s applause for Worcestershire’s Josh Baker, who died last week at the age of just 20. Both teams wore black armbands and the flags flew at half mast over the Frank Woolley Stand.A crowd of over 1000 made the most of the first genuinely warm day of the season at the Spitfire Ground and to no one’s surprise the visitors chose to bat after winning the toss.Players took part a minute’s applause in memory of Josh Baker•Getty Images

Kent’s new overseas signing Beyers Swanepoel generated some early swing, but the hosts’ only victim during the morning session was Jake Libby, who had looked lively on his way to 19 until he was lbw to a Wes Agar delivery so plumb he turned and walked off before the umpire even had time to raise his finger.It was 94 for 1 at lunch and although Kent weren’t bowling badly, Roderick and Kashif looked largely untroubled. They put on 136 for the second wicket, until the latter began to look jittery against Parkinson, eventually nicking him to keeper Harry Finch.Brett D’Oliveira got a start, but having almost nicked Parkinson to Daniel Bell-Drummond at the start of the 61st over he went a couple of deliveries later, snared by the Kent captain at first slip for 18.It was 210 for 3 at tea, but if the D’Oliveira wicket had briefly revived Kent’s hopes, they faded during the evening as Hose joined Roderick for a partnership of 102 that seriously dented home morale.Roderick drove Agar through cow corner to reach 100 but Evison belatedly gave a dwindling number of home supporters something to smile about when he sent his off stump cart-wheeling, before getting the night-watcher Joe Leach lbw for 1 at the end of the penultimate over.

No stranger to the expectations of fans in South Asia, Kirsten has already got to work to identify the obstacles ahead

Danyal Rasool16-May-2024Pakistan’s new white-ball coach Gary Kirsten may not have joined the team in person yet but he appears to be preparing for the magnitude of the challenge already. Speaking to , Kirsten said there was little doubt about the talent in the Pakistan squad, but also hinted at problems he had already picked up on.”Everyone always talks about watching some of these players play on any given day and getting mesmerised by their abilities,” he said, talking to former England fast bowler Steve Harmison and broadcaster Neil Manthorp. “But the short time I’ve had in connection remotely with the team, one can pick up very quickly what the potential blockages are. And I guess it’s my role as a coach, to assist in unlocking the natural ability that they have.”Kirsten, who takes over at a time of both on- and off-field flux in Pakistan cricket, said it was natural to expect negativity, suggesting the knock-on effects of poor on-field results seep into all aspects of the game.Related

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Following a poor ODI World Cup, Pakistan lost 3-0 in Tests to Australia and 4-1 in T20Is in New Zealand. Then against a weakened visiting New Zealand team, Pakistan only managed a 2-2 draw before scraping past Ireland 2-1 this week.During that time, Babar Azam was sacked as captain and replaced by Shaheen Shah Afridi, only for Afridi to be replaced by Babar a few weeks later. Off the field, Mickey Arthur was removed as team director with Mohammad Hafeez performing the role in Australia and New Zealand, while there have been three different PCB chairmen in the last year.”I’ve been around the coaching circuit enough to know that pretty much any team environment that’s not winning, you will get factions. The fact is, it could be highlighted even more in certain cultures and environments. The one thing about being a coach of over 20 years now is that you get a little bit more thick-skinned. And that’s the one thing I did learn from Bob [Woolmer], by the way.”He had a really thick skin by the end of his coaching career. Because you’re just trying to do as best a job you can, accepting the fact that when the team’s not doing well, there’s always going to be a whole bunch of criticism.”Kirsten’s time with India should, in theory at least, prepare him for the administrative challenges of working with a cricket board in South Asia, and the wisdom of accepting there will be inevitable limitations on his powers. “I think my learnings over my three years with India was that there are some battles that you just absolutely not going to win. And then you just focus on the ones that you can win, and hopefully that’s enough for the team to do really well.”It’s really important that you build relationships upwards. You need to work well with the people upstairs and within the confines of the board, and hopefully build a decent relationship so that they buy into your thinking as well.”

Kirsten on Babar: ‘Not fair to depend on one player’

The most obvious example of this comes with the contentious debate around the captain Babar and his best use in the shortest format. Kirsten pointed to his recent innings against Ireland – a matchwinning 42-ball 75 – saying one of his goals was to find Babar the space to play with that kind of freedom more frequently.”It [dependence on Babar] is not fair on any player,” Kirsten said. “He shouldn’t feel like he has to be contributing all the time to a team. I’ve been in touch with Babar. He’s done remarkably well and carries a lot of the weight of the team on his shoulders. What we will try to do as a coaching staff is to lift that a little bit and to realise he’s just one of a whole group of players and that he can free himself up to play with his natural talent.Babar Azam replaced Shaheen Shah Afridi as captain•Sportsfile via Getty Images

“Hopefully we see a lot more of that [the Ireland innings] kind of knock from him. I think if we can unlock that freedom, and understand that there’s a big group of guys that can make match-winning contributions, especially in T20 cricket, that’ll take a lot of pressure off him.”Since Kirsten was appointed coach alongside Jason Gillespie – who will serve as the coach of the Test side – Pakistan have played a three-match T20I series against Ireland, which they won 2-1. Kirsten was not physically with the side during the series due to prior IPL commitments but will link up with the team in England when the two teams play four T20Is ahead of the T20 World Cup.”I got a phone call while I was at the IPL and, they asked whether I was interested. I’m always interested in an international job. It’s always just a massive privilege to be coaching in that space. I haven’t done an international job since coaching South Africa towards the end of 2013. My kids are a little bit older now, which makes it slightly easier to travel, and to work with an international team of the likes of Pakistan was very appealing to me.”

State of Test cricket ‘worries me deeply’

During Kirsten’s two-year contract, Pakistan will participate in three white-ball ICC events: the upcoming T20 World Cup, the 2025 Champions Trophy in Pakistan, and the 2026 T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka. And though he has admittedly set his sights on winning one of the three events, Kirsten said he was not in favour of ICC tournaments coming thick and fast.”Sometimes I do get concerned about the lack of context in many games. But does it mean we need to have an ICC event every year? No I think it could be dangerous to have a World Cup every year or other year because it’s always fun waiting for those events to come around.”And we’ve got to be really careful we don’t lose Test cricket. Having Test-playing nations like South Africa playing four Tests a year worries me deeply – to think Test cricket is not so important anymore.”

The 22nd day of Ashes combat in this series stretched the mental reserves of both teams, but some players coped better than others

Daniel Brettig at Sydney05-Jan-2018Late on the second day, as another bounteous SCG crowd lazed in the January sunshine, Tom Curran tried one of his (even) slower back-of-the-hand balls to Steve Smith. It was what can colloquially be called a “pie”, over-pitched, wide and begging to be gobbled up. Smith, who has pared down his once expansive game in order to achieve maximum efficiency, had acres of free space to hit it into, but managed only to slice it straight to backward point. Bowler and batsmen alike were united in their embarrassment.In many ways, this vignette summed up proceedings, which were of the kind that sap meaning from the term “absolute village” because it can be used so often. There was Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood competing for the simplest dropped catch of the series, James Anderson and Mason Crane conspiring for a run out to end England’s innings, then Crane offering a steady diet of half-trackers, full tosses and false starts at the bowling crease for all cricketers of modest skills to relate to.Little reasoning for all these passages of play could be found in an excellent pitch, which offered something for everyone, nor in the environs of the SCG, which under an azure sky offered up conditions that might have been termed Mary Poppins: practically perfect in every way. Instead it seemed that the aforementioned instances of indiscipline, inattention or plain old ordinariness had more to do with representing the 22nd day of an Ashes duel that in the 21st century is the longest such battle in Test cricket – Australia and England are now the only country who play a fifth Test with any level of regularity.”I don’t know whether it is because the end’s in sight, it’s been a long series, or because we’re up 3-0 or maybe we’ve just got to know each other more, played more cricket together, but here it just feels like we’ve got a job to do but enjoy it along the way,” Cummins said. “When the series is on the line and there’s so many unknowns with two or three matches left it was certainly pretty fiery and every over, every session you’re fighting. Here we know each team so well now and you know your role in the team after five Tests, those uncertainties are taken out of it, I think.”Ashes fatigue, then, provided a test of its own, as distinct from those posed by individual batsmen and bowlers to each other, most either weighed down or bolstered by the experience of crossing paths with the same opponents on multiple occasions now.No-one on either side has fallen into the former category quite like Cameron Bancroft, the West Australian opener who entered this series with a considerable head of steam. Innings of 76 not out and 86 against the Australian Test attack, followed by 228 not out against the Adelaide 12th man in Chadd Sayers, seemed to have put him in the best possible technical and temperamental frame for Ashes combat. A firm, undefeated 82 to help David Warner reel in a fourth-innings target in Brisbane only enhanced that sense.But from a point where Bancroft seemed capable of taking off, he has instead trailed off, afflicted with increasing acuteness by technical flaws that Stuart Broad and James Anderson have exploited with no little efficiency. Put simply, Bancroft has struggled to avoid edging or being bowled by the sorts of deliveries that an international standard batsman must be able to cope with. Balls of a length and line demanding coverage on the front foot, either to defend or attack.Numerous theories have been thrown around the press and commentary boxes of Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney about why this is so, ranging from the angle at which Bancroft’s bat comes down (roughly third man to mid on) to the fact that his pre-ball routine has the bat being tapped at the moment of release so there is precious little time to complete a backlift and stroke before the ball arrives at the other end.Whatever the specifics, Bancroft was left horribly exposed by the first ball he received from Broad, aiming a drive at a well-pitched delivery that also seamed. It was, in fairness, a very useful ball, very much of the kind Broad has made a habit of taking wickets with – 399 in all as of the end of day two – but one that Bancroft’s method turned into the nigh-on-unplayable. Perhaps, given the seam movement, Bancroft might have fallen lbw to it had he covered up in defence, but as it was his optimistic drive left open a gate of the dimensions that the SCG will supposedly need to have installed if it is ever to acquire a drop-in pitch.Where his debut press conference about the Jonny Bairstow “headbutt” had left Smith in stitches, here Bancroft has sounded and looked like he is in need of a mental break, followed by a technical rethink. Before this match, Bancroft had expressed hope that he would demonstrate to watching teammates, coaches and selectors that he had progressed, but instead his dismissal confirmed the impression given earlier in the week when he spoke in ways that suggested a muddled mind.The phrase “every day I wake up” was repeated, as was “life is too short”, and then it all came together with the following bit of life-coachspeak: “Life rewards action and every day I wake up and come to training, come to Test matches to play, I’m learning more about Cameron Bancroft.” He may well be, but so are the world’s bowlers. Undoubtedly, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander, Kagiso Rabada and Morne Morkel have been given plentiful evidence as to how they should attack him in the event that the selectors choose to persist with him. On the evidence of day two, they will be questioning the wisdom of doing so.Lights, out: Cameron Bancroft was bowled for a duck•Getty ImagesBancroft’s exit brought Usman Khawaja to the middle. With a top score of 53 for the series and numerous starts wasted, he has been unable to maintain the sort of substantial contribution to an Australian Test summer that he made in both 2015-16 and last season. After Moeen Ali defeated Khawaja early on in Brisbane, he has faced concerted challenges from the same bowlers who have so confounded Bancroft, with the moving ball – both conventional and reverse – proving fiendish.Khawaja’s languid manner at the crease and at the microphone has not always endeared him to everyone, suggesting plenty of self-belief but also a touch of inflexibility in his methods. He has shown indignation this summer about the way he was shuffled out, then back in, then back out of, the Test team during two Asian tours, and then expressed mystification about why his comments to that effect were reported as such. At the same time Khawaja has tried not to fuss too much over the fact that the big scores have not come, instead reassuring himself that he is not out of form, merely out of runs.As he told ABC Radio in Melbourne: “Definitely less than what I hoped for, I think the difference is probably I got a couple of starts in the last couple of Test matches, 50s, and probably haven’t gone on to make a big score and got out pretty much right when I got to 50. The first time I played a bad shot, the second time was an umpire’s call 50/50 and they can go either way. If I score a hundred in one of those games then you set the game up for your team. So it’s probably disappointing in that respect, but I still feel good. I feel like I’ve contributed to the first three wins in some respect, so for me it’s just about going out there to do as well as I can to hopefully set up games. I haven’t done it this Test match, but hopefully next Test match.”That equanimity was evident in how he took his time at the SCG, strolling safely and unhurriedly to 10 from 31 deliveries before striking his first boundary. With the exception of a couple of plays and misses, Khawaja negotiated England’s pacemen with aplomb, and if he still looked somewhat uncomfortable against Moeen and the fledgling wrist spin of Crane, it was not to the extent that he worried himself into a hasty shot or a loose dismissal. At the other end Warner looked assured until the moment of his dismissal, then Smith used edge as much as middle to play in Khawaja’s slipstream.Neither Khawaja nor Smith, then, looked at their best, but in a series of this duration, the ability to overcome Ashes fatigue and simply keep going is meritorious in itself. Certainly the older pair have dealt better with the mental and technical wages of five Test matches than Bancroft. They should in turn be much the fresher and more effective in South Africa, where they will be required to play to a higher standard than the one that defined this particular day’s cricket.

Manchester United have now made contact over a deal for an “incredible” striker, who would be keen on a move to the Premier League this summer, according to Sky Sports reporter Patrick Berger.

Man Utd pursuing new striker for Amorim

Man United suffered yet another setback in their last Premier League outing, suffering a 4-1 defeat away at Newcastle United to remain 14th in the table with just six games left to play, and they were very poor at both ends of the pitch.

Joshua Zirkzee and Rasmus Hojlund both squandered one big chance at St. James’ Park, which once again underlined the need for Ruben Amorim to bring in a new striker this summer, and several targets have now been identified.

Ipswich Town’s Liam Delap is believed to be chief among them, with the Englishman set to be available for just £30m this summer, given that his side are almost certain to be relegated from the Premier League.

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Napoli’s Victor Osimhen and Eintracht Frankfurt’s Hugo Ekitike are also on the shortlist, with the Red Devils considering options from abroad, and another Bundesliga striker has also recently entered the frame.

According to an update from Sky Sports reporter Berger on X, Man United have now made initial contact over a deal for Bayer Leverkusen striker Patrik Schick, although the move is still in the early stages, with nothing concrete so far.

Leverkusen would be looking to receive €25m – €30m (£21m – £26m) for Schick, making him an affordable option for United, and there are some signs he would be keen on the move, given that the Premier League is said to be his “preferred destination”.

Ideally, Amorim would be looking to bring in a younger striker, but the 29-year-old is viewed as an “interesting” option.

Schick enjoying another impressive Bundesliga campaign

The Czech striker has spent the majority of his career in Germany, chalking up 70 goals and 13 assists in 138 Bundesliga outings, and the current campaign is on course to be one of his most prolific to date.

With 17 league goals to his name, there are clear signs the Leverkusen star is now entering his prime, and he has averaged a remarkable 0.87 non-penalty goals per 90 over the past year, placing him in the top 1% of all strikers in a top five European league.

Not only that, but the forward has been lauded as “incredible” by members of the media in the past, indicating that he could be a real upgrade on Hojlund and Zirkzee, who have fallen way below expectations this season.

That said, it would be a gamble to sign Schick, given that he is unproven in the Premier League, and Delap should remain United’s top striker target.