For Poland, I’d say 1972 to 1982!

Two years before that period, gornik zabrze became the only club to this day to reach a European club competition final, losing to man City in the cup winners Cup final, and some of the players from that team went on to be stars in the national team.

Then in 1972, at the Munich Olympics, the team beat Hungary- who had won the gold medal at the previous two Olympics- 2-1 in the final to claim gold in olympic football. This is still poland’s only senior title (Olympic football was fully senior but amateur only until the 90s when it became an U-23 tournament)

Next, to qualify for world cup 1974, poland had to negotiate a group featuring England. They beat England 2-0 in chorzow, which is still their only victory over England, and then famously drew at Wembley 1-1 after Brian clough had mocked their goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski describing him as a clown - he saved a penalty and made many more great saves, and England missed out on a world cup whose qualifiers they’d entered for the first time as a result (they needed to win that game).

At the tournament itself, they beat Argentina and Italy in the first group stage, and only got knocked out in the last match of the second group stage, which was essentially a semi final, when they lost to hosts and eventual winners west Germany. They then beat Brazil 1-0 in the third place play-off, which was Pele’s last ever world cup game. They were the top scoring team of the tournament, Grzegorz Lato won the golden Boot with 7 goals, and Wladyslaw Zmuda was awarded young player of the tournament.

The whole 1974 world cup was probably the highest point for Poland, where we really rubbed shoulders with the giants of international football, beat four of them and really threatened to win the biggest prize. But we would return to that level again!

In 1976 in Montreal, we reached the Olympic final again, but had to settle for silver as east Germany beat us. Then in 1978 we went to Argentina for the world cup, and reached the second group stage again, but struggled there. You could say that we were beaten quarter finalists, as that is an equivalent finishing position.

The second high water mark for Poland was the 1982 world cup. The group started poorly with goalless draws against Italy and Cameroon, but then we smacked peru 5-1, and beat a strong belgian team who had been euro runners up two years prior 3-0 in the second round. Another goalless draw with USSR put us through and set up a rematch with Italy in the semi final - sadly for us, our star player Boniek - who would go on to play for juventus and roma - was suspended, and their star player of the tournament Paolo Rossi was fresh from a hattrick against Brazil, so he bagged another brace to put them through to the final, where they would beat Germany. We beat the flamboyant france (I think Platini was injured to be fair) 3-2 in the third place play-off to record a third place finish for the second time.

In 1986, we played our fourth World Cup in a row, and we did get through to the second round again, even after Lineker’s famous hattrick against us, but Brazil destroyed us there and we went out. We did beat Portugal in the group stage though, who finished bottom of our group as we, England and Morocco all went through instead. But that would be the last major tournament poland played at until 2002!

We did have a good young generation at the start of the 90s who reached the Olympic final again in 1992 and lost 3-2 with hosts Spain, but after the fall of communism the organisation of football fell by the wayside and the national team really struggled, once we even barely beat San Marino 2-1 in a qualifier.

But in the 70s and early 80s, gods we were strong then