Krakow Edge Past Puscha in High-Scoring Friendly
Vechista Krakow saw off Puscha Nepolomice 4-3 in a club friendly on Thursday evening. The match finished with seven goals between them, and the hosts held their nerve after a frantic second half. To be fair, neither side looked particularly settled in this opening encounter of the new campaign. By then, both managers were likely assessing options rather than chasing results.
The opening exchanges came thick and fast. Gjoni converted a penalty in the sixteenth minute before Lungoyi levelled within a minute. Maigaard put Krakow ahead in the twenty-first, only for Gerstenstein to respond in the twenty-seventh. Kurzeja restored the two-goal cushion just before the quarter-hour mark of the second half. Things came to a head early, with five goals in thirty-five minutes.
And here's the thing about that twenty-first minute. Maigaard's strike caught the eye, not just for the finish but for the build-up. The way the ball moved across the pitch suggested they'd worked on these patterns in training. Puscha's defence looked caught between pressing and dropping deep, a common dilemma in friendlies when you're still finding your shape.
The second half tempo dropped, but the goals kept flowing. Another scorer emerged in the seventy-seventh minute, keeping Krakow comfortably ahead. Puscha pulled one back in the eighty-eighth, a late consolation that at least showed they hadn't switched off. The hosts had the deeper squad for this kind of fixture, and the substitutions showed it.
The statistics told a familiar story. Krakow controlled sixty-one per cent of possession and registered seventy-six attacks compared to Puscha's thirty-eight. The hosts won ten corners to none, which tells you something about territorial dominance. Both sides picked up one booking, nothing dramatic there. The clean-sheet run came to an end for both, but that was expected in a friendly.
This result gives Krakow something positive to build on after a mixed recent run. They'd drawn with Widzew Łódź and Zagłębie Lubin but lost to Pogoń Szczecin and Wisła Kraków in their last five. Puscha showed flashes against Warta Poznań and ŁKS Łódź but struggled for consistency. The scoreline reflects a game that decided itself in the first half, and both sides now turn their attention to preparations.
