It has been a momentous week for Artur Boruc, if not quite for his Polish pals. The Celtic goalkeeper celebrated the birth of his first son, Alex, before producing an awesome display that protected Poland from a battering against Austria on Thursday night.

Leo Beenhakker declared him one of the top 10 goalkeepers in the world. It was an unusually conservative comment. It is difficult to think of nine more reliable specialists. Gianluigi Buffon is recognised as the best in the business, with Petr Cech not far behind him. Thereafter, there is no-one who possesses Boruc's brawn or excellence on the big occasion, certainly not in this tournament.

Edwin van der Sar has the experience but, at 37, he is becoming increasingly fallible at set-pieces. Sebastian Frey has cat-like reactions but does not possess the sheer presence of Boruc. The same applies to Iker Casillas, Spain's prodigious shot-stopper cursed by a lack of inches. Jens Lehmann is Germany's No.1 for no other reason than his skills have eroded at a slower rate than Oliver Kahn's.

Boruc's heroics are nothing new to Gordon Strachan. None the less, in his summer job as BBC pundit, he was publicly effusive in his praise of Boruc's expertise. Privately, he will be preparing himself for renewed attempts to prise Boruc from Celtic Park. In international terms, Boruc is a one-man team. The country's player of the tournament during World Cup 2006, he has since seen off the challenges of Jerzy Dudek, Tomasz Kuszczak and Lukas Fabianski to become the undisputed No.1.

Already, he has used Euro 2008 to prove himself a modern-day Peter Schmeichel. With AC Milan admitting this week they have been priced out of the market for Boruc, whose new contract at Celtic will ensure a £10m bounty, Manchester United are one of the few clubs glamorous enough to tempt him. Van der Sar will retire from international football at the end of Euro 2008 and, at 37, Sir Alex Ferguson is already scouting for an adequate replacement. Kuszczak, for club and country, is no more than an able deputy. Boruc would be a star at Old Trafford and a man to evoke memories of the great Schmeichel. Retaining Boruc's services next season will be as important as any signing by Strachan. In five frenzied first-half minutes in the Ernst Happel Stadium, the Pole made three instinctive stops that kept Beenhakker's team in the game. He denied Martin Harnik through sheer intimidation alone, having stayed on his feet, in the starfish pose made famous by Schmeichel. He denied the same attacker again with an even more spectacular save, sweeping the ball to safety having originally dived in the wrong direction. And when Umit Korkmaz eluded Poland's playground offside on the halfway line and as he bore in on goal, Boruc was grateful for a sturdy jockstrap.

Not long after, the sight of Roger Guerreiro wheeling away in celebration was too much for the Austria manager to bear. Having watched his team pummel Poland for 30 minutes, he sank to his knees when the Pole converted a goal that was not only embarrassingly against the run of play but clearly offside.

Howard Webb then kept up the finest traditions of English refereeing controversy. Webb became the first referee of Euro 2008 to bravely adhere to UEFA's new hobby horse: punishing the wrestling matches that ensue inside the penalty box. That his decision occurred in the third minute of injury time left Beenhakker apoplectic afterwards, insistent that Webb "wanted to show that he is a big boy".

The penalty, conceded by Mariusz Lewandowski and converted by Ivica Vastic, was a correct decision. That it took until match 12 for the guideline to be implemented - when worse offences have been ignored - vindicated Beenhakker's ire.

"Did you see a penalty? I didn't," he snapped. "We received an excellent DVD and a talk from UEFA pointing out what would be allowed and what would not. In spite of these instructions, I have seen all the matches and in every one I have seen the same free wrestling in the box. We have had all the explanations but still the same thing happens."

Without Boruc between the posts, Thursday night would have been a whole lot worse for the Poles.