Poland’s captain Jakub Blaszczykowski has publicly criticised something which must have crossed the minds of many Polish football fans.

In less than a year Poland will take part in what is arguably the most important tournament in the nation’s football history. And all their matches will be played in Poland or neighbouring Ukraine, while all their opponents will be European.

So, what is the point of dragging the players all the way from Warsaw to Seoul – ten hours flying time plus all the jet lag, when there must be some pretty useful European opponents who would be available and willing to come to Poland?

“This game will not benefit the team much, it could even be damaging,” the Dortmund midfielder adds. By that he probably means that a defeat against the side which beat Poland 2-0 in their 2002 World Cup encounter, could be a demoralising setback so close to the EURO finals.

At the present time South Korea are ranked only 33 in the FIFA World Rankings, with no fewer than 21 European countries above them. As there will only be 15 countries other than Poland in EURO 2012, a defeat here would look very much like Poland could start the tournament as complete rank outsiders. And at this particular time Polish football needs as much morale-boosting as it can get.

If the seeming pointlessness of the exercise together with the jet lag and the usual disadvantage of playing away are added together, it begins to look like the Reprezentacja are being sent halfway around the world – for nothing. Because even a narrow win against South Korea would still not prove that they are good enough to beat the worst of the other 15 Finalists. Perhaps Japan the present Asian Champions would have made more sense, they are presently ranked joint 15th alongside France. Blaszczykowski echoes the feelings of many Polish football publications.

“We have excellent stadiums now, so let’s play in them. Build up the atmosphere for UEFA EURO, let’s play at home.” On the day the Reprezentacja play  in Seoul, seven European nations will not be participating in UEFA EURO 2012 qualifiers: Slovenia, Hungary, Israel, Georgia, Bulgaria, Norway and Lithuania all have a four-day wait until their next competitive games and it seems a good bet that all of them would have been glad to play against a possible EURO 2012 Finals opponent, in one of the tournament’s stadiums. Poznan, Gdansk and Wroclaw will all be available and their owners would surely have been pleased to stage a money-spinning friendly. But in their wisdom the PZPN has chosen to help out the Korean Republic’s Football Association instead, as well as themselves.

The online football magazine ‘Sportfan’ claims that as far as Polish football in general is concerned, this Korean adventure will benefit only PZPN’s coffers – and not much at that.

“This is hardly going to be an astronomical profit. But it looks here like every grosz counts,” it says. Last October PZPN sent Poland all the way out to Chicago for a similar match against non-European opponents and on a different continent. Thankfully they didn’t lose and got a respectable 2-2 draw against USA. But a bad defeat in Seoul would more than nullify some promising recent results by a team that looks like it might just be getting up on its feet at last.