Polish football - Ekstraklasa - mid-season review

With snow now covering the football pitches of Poland it’s time to put together a beginners guide to Polish league fitba and the Ekstraklasa…Obviously it will be a subjective guide as I’m fanatically following Lechia Gdansk…

With Euro 2012 fast approaching interest is rising. The way Canal+ shows the games it would make you believe that some decent football is being played from time to time but most importantly it shows that new grounds have been built. One recent round of games had almost 100k fans in the stands and while I know that is not an impressive figure by Western European standards an average attendance of over 10k has not happened in Poland since the 1980s.

Anyway, the following is a “who’s who” from the top to the bottom of the table at the halfway point. We'll start with the top 8 teams this week and look at the bottom 8 next week.

1. Jagiellonia Bialystok 30 points
2. Wisla Krakow 27
3. Legia Warszawa 27
4. Korona Kielce 25
5. GKS Belchatow 23
6. Lechia Gdansk 23
7. Gornik Zabrze 22
8. Polonia Warszawa 20
9. Slask Wroclaw 20
10. Zaglebie Lubin 19
11. Lech Poznan 19
12. Widzew Lodz 18
13. Polonia Bytom 17
14. Ruch Chorzow 17
15. Arka Gdynia 17
16. Cracovia 8

(Map of who is located where can be found here)

1. Jagiellonia (pronounced Yagielonia) Bialystok are the surprise league leaders halfway through the season. They’ve never finished in the top three before but won the cup last year beating Lechia Gdansk in the semis. “Jaga” first appeared in Div One during the late 1980s. Some of these games were then screened a couple of weeks later in Chicago on VHS. You will always find people from an area where unemployment is always high everywhere so if you encounter someone in a Polish football shirt abroad (i.e. Madrid, Brussels, NY) it’s most likely to be the yellow and red kit of Jagiellonia.

Bialystok is a city where there is not a great deal to do but the people are brilliant and the whole region supports the club. The forward line is led by Tomasz Frankowski who has been the League's top scorer twice (I think…) while playing for Wisla Krakow. It was years ago now though and he is almost 37 so it says a lot about the playing level here. Frankowski has recently been named the forwards coach by the national manager (our old friend Franz Smuda) and while still a player he will teach the players of the national team how to score…!! Will Jaga remain at the top? I hope so as the pundits only care about the big 3 of Legia, Wisla and Lech, so it would be nice if Bialystok proves them all wrong.

2. Wisla Krakow – They have performed an amazing turnaround since the end of August when, after being dumped from the Europa League by some Azeri outfit, they fired Henyk Kasperczak and employed Robert Maaskant from NAC Breda. He has impressed everyone by talking good English and riding a bicycle to work everyday. However, it does look as if he only brought one suit with him because whenever he is on TV (and he is a lot) he wears it!! Magic Zurawski, the former Celtic player, is here too but he is so weak these days that he has been asked to help the manager more and more which is a nice way of telling him he is not fit to play anymore. Wisla’s defense is very suspect despite having Osman Chavez who played for Honduras in the last World Cup. Lechia lost 2-5 in Krakow in a game voted the best game of the season so far, but which could easily have been 5-2 to Lechia.

Wisla fans are in a constant state of urban warfare with Cracovia fans and Krakow is probably the only Polish city where you see no people wearing club colors apart from match days.

3. Legia Warsaw – They used to be an army club but their fans were on the “right side” during communism!! Legia always took the best players from rival teams so they had to ‘serve time in the army’. I remember Legia symbol Dariusz “Jackie” Dziekanowski being whistled throughout a Poland v Cyprus game in Gdansk in 1987 (it ended 0-0 earning Cyprus its first ever away point in a qualifying game). Weaker players not picked by Legia were called up by the other Army clubs of  Slask Wroclaw and Zawisza Bydgoszcz.

Legia were and still are universally hated apart from their friends in Szczecin. While they do have some support nationwide it is much safer to support your local side in Poland. They had a long conflict with their owner which involved boycotting games. However, when the new ground was completed the conflict finished. The opening game of the new ground was a friendly with Arsenal and apparently some of the visiting fans were beaten up on the way to the ground. Although I hate them I must admit that they are always in top 3 in the various fictionary hooligan/fans/travelling away numbers/vocal support league tables.

Before the season started they spent a ridiculous amount of money on players from the Balkans and South America but were third from bottom which made people all over country laugh. However they then began winning using players who were not only ridiculed last season but were still playing shite.

4. Korona Kielce – They are pretty new to the league scene, playing in the lower leagues all my life. Their forward line is led by a Brazilian pensioner, a 36-year old chap with a big belly called Edi Andradina and Andrzej Niedzielan (formerly of NEC Nijmegen….who scored 8 goals this term and is joint top scorer with Tomasz Frankowski). They were probably the first top flight side in the country who moved into a modern ground, which holds around 12k. Everyone in Poland was a bit too over excited about this but now the national team has played some games here, including 10-0 against postmen and plumbers from San Marino.

5. GKS Belchatow – They are a team from a medium sized town near Lodz. GKS are currently sponsored by the state energy company but the sponsorship is due to expire soon so it will be back to Division 2 for them…I suppose and hope!!

6. Lechia Gdansk – The chosen ones of the nation obviously. Sadly we have not had too much success on the pitch over the years although I’m quite happy we are top of the all-time table of Div 2. However in the stands it is another story. There are the famous games against Juventus in 1983 ECWC after winning the Cup as a 3rd Div side. After losing in Turin 0-7, the return leg is famously remembered due to Lech Walesa being in the stands and the whole ground chanting his name when Solidarnosc was illegal. Obviously Polish State TV stopped the transmission due to ahem…‘technical problems’!! Now a new ground is close to being completed. With a capacity of 44k it looks bigger than the Murrayfield where Heart of Midlothian played their most recent European games.

In 2001 after two unsuccessful mergers, first with Olimpia Poznan and then with Polonia Gdansk we dropped down to Div 6 starting practically from scratch. This was a great time, visiting all those villages, giving 100 zloty each month so the players could have a pizza after the game and having your name read on the PA system during half time. I remember taking my dog to lots of games and also my future wife too (the things you do for love!!). Progress was made and we were promoted each year until having to spend 3 years in Div 2. It’s not easy to speak about my club so feel free to ask for more.

7. Gornik Zabrze – The record “Meisterschaft” (as they say in Zabrze) winner with 14 titles to their name, even though Ruch Chorzow also has the same number of titles. Some people, especially those in Zabrze, say that the titles won before WWII do not count as Ruch Chorzow was called Wielkie Hajduki then. Gornik Zabrze is also the only Polish club to reach a European cup final - the 1970 Cup Winners Cup vs Man City (lost 1-2). Anyway Gornik was only promoted last season after being relegated rather surprisingly after Allianz (German insurance giant) had bought majority shares in the club.

8. Polonia Warsaw – Now where do I start? They bought their place in the top flight from Groclin Grodzisk, who once famously beat Hertha Berlin and Man City in the UEFA Cup and have an owner Jozef Wojciechowski who is clearly mad. He has a habit of sacking coaches like Atletico Madrid’s Jesus Gil but sometimes he has good ideas like taking two of his players to the Gran Derbi. Remarkably he did not invite Pawel Janas (the ex national coach) for the trip which no doubt means that he will be the next one shown the exit door.

Polonia are traditionally the team of Warsaw and are supported by around 1% of the capital's inhabitants. You can’t deny they have history - like winning the first league title after WWII when they were playing at Legia’s ground because their own had been demolished after the Warsaw Uprising…but that is history. Nowadays they can draw anything between 3 and 5 thousand people to their ground and you can normally watch the game peacefully as an away supporter sitting in the home section without any problems.

Maciej Slominski supports Lechia Gdansk (if you hadn't figured that out!) and writes for the Polish football website futbolnet.pl. He was ably assisted in preparing the article by Neil Edgar.