THERE was, disappointingly, no sign of Robert Lewandowski at Poland’s pre-match press conference. Perhaps he was simply having a lie down having become disoriented from all the roundabouts the team bus had to negotiate to reach their hotel in leafy East Kilbride. Regardless, wherever he was on Wednesday afternoon - as head coach Adam Nawalka and players Grzegorz Krychowiak, Maciej Rybus and Kamil Grosicki all took to a temporary stage to talk about the national team’s forthcoming Euro 2016 against Scotland at Hampden - his ears would certainly have been burning. For if there were moments when the Bayern Munich striker wasn’t the topic under discussion, then they were rather fleeting indeed.

Nawalka and others have repeatedly tried to rubbish the notion that Poland are a one-man team. It is a bit like insisting there was more to Wings than just Paul McCartney. Not many small European nations can boast a genuine world-class player in their ranks and in Lewandowski the Poles have struck it lucky. It has taken a while for the 27 year-old to replicate his prolific scoring form at club level on the international front, but over the past few years he has begun doing so and now doesn’t look like stopping. He is the leading scorer in qualifying group D – with two more than Bayern team-mate Thomas Mueller – and will be highly-fancied to add to his tally against a Scotland defence, it ought to be said, managed to shut him out the last time the teams met. And more on that later.

Lewandowski’s imperious scoring form will have Tartan Army members nervously sipping on their pints before kick-off. Much will be made of his recent splurge of 12 goals from his last four games but it is his consistency that makes him such a threat. In his 15 matches for club and country since the start of the season, he has failed to score in only three of them. A Scotland clean sheet, therefore, could be chalked up as a badge of honour.

Perhaps only Sergio Aguero or Cristiano Ronaldo can lay claim to the title of the most potent goalscorer in world football right now but, unsurprisingly, Nawalka was happy to endorse his man for that particularly accolade. “Of course he is the number one - he is the best striker in the world,” said the Poland head coach via a translator. “I know him personally, I know his skills and I can count on him. To me, he’s the best. Robert is a very important player in our team. He is the key player and has a lot of different skills. He has leadership qualities and he gives lot of energy to other players.”

Not every headline generated by Lewandowski in recent times has been positive, however. The player will likely complain that he has been misquoted or misinterpreted but the general message that has emerged of late, regardless of the finer details, is that the Bayern striker did not take too kindly to what he felt was rough treatment from the Scotland defence when the teams met in Warsaw 12 months ago.

Having heard enough of his bleating about the need for a “strong referee” at Hampden, one Scottish newspaper elected to have a pop back, photoshopping a baby’s bonnet onto Lewandowski’s head to illustrate the player having “spat the dummy”. That led to the rather bizarre scene where a Polish journalist wafted the back page of the paper in the direction of Nawalka and the players on stage, as the head coach’s eyes visibly widened trying to make sense of it all.

“Of course we need to be prepared for a good fight, for aggressive play,” he added. “In this final stage of qualifying we need to be prepared for this. But we hope that skill will actually be more important. We also hope we will be in control of the game. Thinking about how Robert has performed recently, there will be questions regarding him in the media but we will focus on other aspects of the game.”

Many things have been said about this Scotland team – and a lot of new phrases were added after the loss in Georgia – but that they are a group of over-physical cloggers has rarely been one of them. If anything, Scotland could probably do with an extra streak of nastiness, a throwback to the days when a ball-playing midfielder did not mean someone was a nice passer. Nawalka, to be fair, acknowledged Scotland are not that kind of team.

“I think the key asset of the Scottish team is the fact that they can do very well as a unit. They play collectively, they are very disciplined and they’re also creative. They do not play in the traditional British physical way and they don't play long balls. They can be very constructive in offence and have a very advanced European game. So we need to respect them. And we certainly think about them as a difficult team.” Lewandowski’s thoughts on the matter, for once, went unrecorded.