In the spotlight: Polish football team

The team crashed out after tepid displays, despite the millions of fans back home and tens of thousands of those who cheered them on at the German stadiums, making the game against Ecuador look like it was being played in Warsaw and not Gelsenkirchen. The loss is even more disappointing considering the fact that Poland was regarded as the favorite to qualify from the group along with Germany, especially as the team thrashed Ecuador 3-0 in a friendly just six months ago.

The Polish players lacked speed and vitality and, as one British paper put it, they looked like they were playing with lead in their shorts. Fans and experts blame coach Paweł Janas for the poor showing. Certainly the players' physical preparation was far from perfect and the coach tinkered with the team's tactics just before the World Cup, abandoning a strategy that the team had worked on for months. The result was chaos.

The only good memories Poland has from the competition are its fans - in the run up to the World Cup, Polish supporters had been labeled hooligans and German police were anxious about the potential for clashes between German and Polish football fanatics. These fears proved unfounded, much to the relief of the police and Poles in general.

But no matter how hard the fans cheered, six shots in two games and no scoring will never be enough to cut it in the toughest competition in international football.