Poland Flys To The World Cup In Style, Escorted By F16 Fighter Jets

Top Gun 3...

Poland football team jets

Image: @LaczyNasPilka

The Poland national football team were escorted by F16 fighter planes to the Southern border of the country en route to the World Cup in Qatar, just days after two Polish citizens were killed in a missile strike.


The jets flew beside a plane carrying members of the team to the southern border of Poland, where it meets Ukraine.

The Polish national team shared a video of the pilots to its official Twitter account with the caption (in Polish), “We were escorted to the southern border of Poland by F16 planes!”

The post continued, “Thank you and greetings to the pilots.”

One of the planes can also be seen bearing a Polish flag with the word ‘Republic of Poland’ written on the side.

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The team made it safely to Qatar, ready for their first game against Mexico, which takes place on Wednesday 23 November at 3.00am AEDT.

Robert Lewandowski and co. will fancy themselves to go through in Group C, having also drawn Saudi Arabia and one of the tournament favourites Argentina.

Poland’s best finish at a World Cup is third, which they achieved twice in 1974 and 1982. However, they have not made it out of the group stage in their last three World Cup campaigns.

With star-striker Lewandowski at the helm though, Poland are not one to sleep on.

Why were there fighter pilots?

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine spilled into Poland this week after a missile hit a Polish farm located on the Ukrainian border, killing two civilians.

Poland believes that the incident was likely a Ukrainian air defence missile launched in response to a barrage of Russian attacks. Both Russia and Ukraine have denied it was them.

There were concerns that the missile strike would lead to an escalation of war. But Polish president Andrzej Duda said that the strike looked to be unintentional, so the country would not look to mobilise.

But clearly, the Polish national team was not taking any risks and have gone full ‘Top Gun’ on their way to Qatar.

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