How – in fact – all year came the minute erstwhile the Polish ball confronted European reality. The football field turned out to be smarter than math.
How beautiful are these tables, right? Here and here we won the runner-up of Luxembourg, so we have 0.2 points more. From next year, 5 teams in the cup, including 2 in the Champions League eliminations. And that kind of information, actually, all week. After all fight with European cucumbers. Extraclass just behind the back of the strongest!
Yeah, and since the ranking favored us, we didn't truly look into his methodology. After a closer look, we would gotta conclude that these points are almost exclusively played in the weakest of the 3 games, the Conference League. This, in turn, has been designed so that almost all UEFA country has individual in this single group phase. due to the fact that the champions who fall out of the League then play among themselves in the way of further eliminations. Why is that worth knowing? due to the fact that the club and UEFA national rankings have become erratic. It was never valid, but the effect was reinforced by an increase in scoring possibilities.
And yes, the adventures of Polish clubs in these games, whether Lech or Jagiellonia or others, have given us any points, but how unhealthyly we get! The headlines “the first time 5 Polish bands will play in Europe” propose that this anticipation exists at least from the Roman Empire, and we are yet entering. No, you ladies, this anticipation has been in place for exactly... a year, mainly due to the fact that the squad pool has been increased at all.
It was risky from the beginning that the Polish club ball made any crucial progress. That it's just up now. We beat amateurs and wait for the draw. We draw the script 3 rounds forward, and here they enter: Crvena Zvezda, AEK Larnak and Maccabi Haifa and there is simply a hit to the wall. It is not Liverpool, AEK Athens and Galatasaray just the champion of Serbia and average teams from Cyprus and Israel. erstwhile I compose this, we inactive have rematch games ahead of us, but in the case of the Legion and Lech it's truly going to be hard to fight for anything.
But do we even have the right to feel disappointed? I don't think so. To be honest, as a spectator of league games for decades – I do not truly realize which aspect would prove that the Polish club ball made any crucial improvement leap. The stadium infrastructure has improved and more people go to games, but has their level of sports increased? I think we are alternatively occupied in positions that have been occupied so far, as evidenced by the flood of foreigners. Polish talents here do not feel the anticipation of improvement (after abolishing the youth regulations it is in general) and escape from Extraclass yet before graduation, and are replaced by unfulfilled talents from stronger leagues, which were found in the turn of their careers.
20 years ago, as a dry football manager, I was annoyed erstwhile after respective seasons the Polish league filled with foreigners. I thought it was a simulation error. After all these years, I see that it was the developers from Sports Interactive that were right. This, however, would not should be decisive in itself, after all, the English League is even more international. But the problem is, it doesn't rise the level of the game.
I will not end this text with any revolutionary postulate or a call for change, due to the fact that it is truly hard to find a way out of the situation and possibly this current function should be accepted. It can tactically honk success erstwhile we scope the quarter-finals of “The Ladybug”. But at least don't inflate the bubble like we are in the hall of the best and enter with the fur.
Tomasz Jankowski
photo profile X Legion Warsaw
Think Poland, No. 33-34 (17-24.08.2025)
