Sweet FA

7th August 2010

One of Poland’s greatest successes of recent years has been winning the right to stage Euro 2012. The moment when Michel Platini read out the name of the winner and the ecstatic scenes, with Michal Listkiewicz, then head of the Polish FA (PZPN), hugging all and sundry, was a moment of pure joy. Since then, the preparations for the championships have gone pretty well. The stadiums are going up – executive boxes are already on sale – and will be ready on time. Government appears to have cut through the legislative tangle and the most important infrastructure appears to be on track. There will be problems with transport and accommodation, but the championships will go ahead in beautiful stadiums and will likely be an organisational success.

But what of the Polish football team’s participation in the event? They must be thankful that qualification is automatic, because there’s not a hope in hell they would ever qualify. That qualification, though, will not save them from likely total humiliation once the tournament starts. The honest truth is Polish football is in a dreadful state, and it will get worse before it gets better.

The last two weeks has seen the almost total elimination of Polish teams from European competition, and all before the football season proper has even begun. The level of disaster is unprecedented and has led to articles in the Polish sporting press describing their footballers and teams as, “The laughing-stock of Europe.”

Sadly, they are right. A country that produced such great players as Deyna, Boniek and the lugubrious leader of the PZPN, Grzegorz Lato, has for twenty years been bereft of talent – without a single player that anyone outside Poland could recall by name. The game is rotten from the base up.

Attendances at Polish football matches are worse than pathetic. Total attendances in the Polish league on a given weekend would just about fill Arsenal’s Emirates stadium. Of those that attend, a leading role is played by the worst criminal and hooligan elements. Racist and violent slogans are present on banners in stadiums, and the hooligans have the run of the terraces, leading their mindless, yob followers in ever more filthy and pointlessly, humourlessly offensive chants.

A few years ago I attended a match between Groclin and Man City. A Polish friend of mine pointed out the head of crowd security – an unpleasant-looking gentleman. “He’s the head of the local mafia and a serial hooligan,” my colleague informed me. There are many decent fans in Poland, but when the crowds are managed by thugs, the decent fans mostly stay away.

Another reason the decent fans stay away is because of the rampant corruption in the game. What’s the point in supporting a team if your keeper is as likely to throw the match on behalf of his gambling mafia mates? Or the referee is certain to red card one of your team to ensure the syndicates get the right result?

Prosecutors are still trying to clear up the monumental corruption in the Polish game. The central figure is a gangster known by the pseudonym ‘the Barber’ – he would, among other things, arrange with board members of the PZPN which officials and observers were to be appointed to specific matches, so as to then approach compliant referees and set up the result.

The full horrific scale of the corruption only became clear to prosecutors investigating the case when in March 2006 the Barber got wind of the investigation into his activities and began phoning every single official and referee he was associated with – telling them what they were to say. The Barber was careful, and changed his SIM card for a new pay-as-you-go contract up to ten times a day, but to no avail – investigators were able to track his every call, follow his every word.

Despite all this evidence that the corruption in the PZPN went right to the very top, nothing of any note has been done to shake the organisation up – it’s still basically the same ageing bureaucrats overseeing the same discredited procedures that have been sat there throughout the last decades of failure, incompetence and corruption.

The lack of money from attendances and related sales begs the question of where the money in Polish football does come from. Teams are owned by various wealthy individuals and corporations, but their finances are as clear as milk. I spoke once to the manager of a Polish Ekstraklasa side, who explained to me, “Poland is a funny place, my team has an income of half a million zloty a week, but we have no money to pay the wages.”

Poland does produce talented players – it’s impossible for it to be otherwise. But what happens to that talent? It’s wasted. The coaches of the Spanish youth team once commented that at under-17 level Poland was a very difficult team to play against. Then, at each successive age level, it got easier and easier. The conclusion is simple – Polish and Spanish players have the same talent and ability to begin with, but the Polish players stop developing. This means it’s a structural problem, and therefore one that can be resolved. But the current system clearly rots the talented players’ heads.

Robert Lewandowski – a highly talented player, who could actually be the world-class player Poland has been waiting for, could have moved to a Premiership side this summer. Instead, he selected Dortmund and the Bundesliga. From there, the likely way is down. Before long, he’ll be warming the bench then move in a couple of seasons, like Ebi Smolarek, to an Ekstraklasa struggler, or to the champions of Malta, and bingo – another talent wasted.

The blame for all this lies squarely with the PZPN. But they are in conflict with themselves as evidenced by last week’s NPE story on the Head of the Podkarpackie FA talking about the “cesspit” in the PZPN, and in conflict with the fans, who they are currently litigating against.

The Polish national side has fantastic fans – painted loons in red and white who travel the globe tunelessly intoning ‘Polska – bialo-czerwoni’ to a tune by the Pet shop Boys (do they realise it’s a gay anthem?). These fantastic fans were so angered at their team’s dismal, failed qualification for the World Cup that they organised a boycott of a meaningless home game. One senior member of the PZPN accused the fans of trying to destroy democracy and the Polish state. Throughout the affair Grzegorz Lato, head of the PZPN, has never failed to make clear his total contempt for the fans.

Those fans gave clear expression of their mutual contempt for Mr Lato and his colleagues on their website konieczpzpn.pl. (roughly meaning ‘end the Polish FA’). For expressing those negative opinions the PZPN has taken their own fans to court for bringing the PZPN into disrepute and slandering their good name. The fans’ defence, quite reasonably, is that you can’t slander an organisation that has already thoroughly compromised itself. Meanwhile, top executives at the PZPN pocket hefty salaries, some in the region of PLN 50,000 a month, and travel the world on expenses.

So, here we are, about to lurch into another season of mediocre football in front of miserly, miserable crowds run by mindless hooligans overseen by a minging bureaucracy. Marvellous.

Footnote: corruption

Some people may think that accusing the Polish FA of corruption is some kind of prejudice and that, after all, other FAs are hardly likely to be free of it. A kind of ‘let he who is without guilt cast the first stone’ defence. But that won’t work. Yes, corruption is everywhere and nobody can claim total innocence, but there are degrees of corruption, and Poland’s got it bad. Here is a list of those that prosecutors have managed to bring charges against in relation to operating as part of a group of organised crime, set up and managed by Ryszard F. – the Barber.

(Those with * after their name have admitted their guilt and been sentenced) This does not mean that the list encompasses the full extent of corruption in the game here, but it gives the idea.



Ryszard F. – ex-Amica Wronki activist

Marian D. – ex-head of refereeing of the Slask FA

Lukasz B. – ex-referee from Krakow

Slawomir B. - ex-referee from Opole*

Jan C. – ex-match observer from Katowice

Kazimierz F. - ex-match observer from Olsztyn, PZPN board member*
Antoni F. - ex-referee from Stalowa Wola

Grzegorz G. - ex-international referee from Radom

Grzegorz G. - ex-referee from Warsaw

Jerzy G. - ex-match observer from Szczecin

Jerzy G. - ex-match observer from Warsaw and the PZPN’s head of refereeing

Mariusz G. - ex-referee from Lodz

Jacek G. - ex-international referee from Warsaw

Maciej H. - ex-referee from Poznan

Edward H. - ex-match observer from Slupsk

Miroslaw J. - ex-match observer from Szczecin

Adam K. - ex-referee from Rzeszow*

Wieslaw K. - ex-match observer from Lodz, head of referee training 

Grzegorz K. - ex-referee from Poznan

Henryk K. - ex-match observer from Gdańsk, PZPN board member

Adam K. - ex-referee from Poznan
Piotr K. - ex-referee from Wroclaw*

Marek K. - ex-referee from Bytom*

Andrzej K. - ex-referee from Czestochowa

Dariusz M. - ex-referee from Nowa Sol*

Marcin N. - ex-referee from Koszalin*

Janusz O. - ex-referee from Radom

Tomasz P. - ex-referee from Czestochowa

Krzysztof P. - ex-match observer from Poznan

Marcin P. - ex-referee from Szczecin
Mariusz R. - ex-referee from Tychow

Zbigniew R. - ex-referee from Poznan*

Marek R. - ex-referee from Pila

Mariusz S. - ex-referee from Opole*

Piotr S. - ex-referee from Szczecin

Pawel S. - ex-referee from Gdansk

Krzysztof S. - ex-international referee from Tarnow

Andrzej Sz. - ex-match observer from Jelenia Gora

Artur Sz. - ex-referee from Krakow

Piotr S. - ex-referee from Katowice*

Wincenty T. - ex-match observer from Gorzow Wlkp.

Piotr W. - ex-referee from Krakow*

Krzysztof W. - ex-match observer from Warsaw*

Krzysztof Z. - ex-referee from Lodz

Wit Z. - ex-match observer from Warsaw, PZPN board member
Jarosław Z. - ex-international referee from Bydgoszcz*




Here are other well-known figures accused in relation to the same affair 


Waldemar K. – ex-player from Lech Poznan

Marek M. - ex-international referee from Ciechanow

Piotr R. – ex-player from Lech Poznan

Wojciech S. – ex-Chairman Jagiellonia Bialystok*

Wojciech Sz. – ex-activist Swit Nowy Dwor and Widzew Lodz*

Robert W. - ex-referee from Warsaw

Janusz W. – ex-manager of Swit, earlier manager of the Polish national team

Zygmunt Z. - ex-match observer from Przemysl

Stanisław Z. ...