Mixed emotions for two-goal Podolski

by Graham Wood from Wörthersee Stadion

Lukas Podolski was born in Poland (©Getty Images)

Germany forward Lukas Podolski admitted to having "mixed feelings" about scoring the goals against Poland which gave Joachim Löw's team a winning start to their UEFA EURO 2008™ campaign at the expense of his country of birth.

Important win
The FC Bayern München player struck in the 20th and 72nd minutes – but celebrated neither – in Klagenfurt to propel Germany to the top of Group B and earn himself the Carlsberg Man of the Match award. "Obviously I have mixed feelings," said Podolski. "I was born in Poland and I have a big family there so it's a very important thing for me. We applied what we worked on in training and must push forward from here." Following Croatia's success against Austria in the earlier fixture, the 23-year-old accepted the hard work was just beginning, saying: "As I said, this is the first step and we must continue – we can't relax. We have two days to refresh ourselves and then it's back to training and everything continues from there."

Obvious choice
Podolski's double and his all-round threat caught the eye of the UEFA Technical Team, who deemed him the best performer on show at the Wörthersee Stadion. Roy Hodgson, a member of the nine-man team of experts, said of his display: "I think he was the obvious choice for the award because, apart from playing very well, he scored two goals. However, it would be unfair to say he was the difference between the two teams, because I feel the two central midfield players, [Michael] Ballack and [Torsten] Frings, were very important. But it would be hard to justify not giving Podolski the award because he was very impressive and scored both goals."

German experience
The Fulham FC manager continued: "Germany are a hard team to beat because they have a lot of experience, pace and strength in their team. I thought the Polish had an equal share of possession but came up against a strong defence. At 1-0 down they were having to chase the game so they were always in danger of being caught on the counterattack as they were obliged to throw people forward. But they can feel a little hard done by."