This is truly rather strange, but my own biography directs me towards “anti-system” even erstwhile it comes to sports.
And this is about the national football. The erstwhile selector of Poland's representation, Francis Smuda, has, of course, received many press epitaphs, but almost everyone (even my highly valued editor of Polish Thought!) omitted his Mielec adventures, although it was from 1 of them that the career of a large trainer began, who talks a lot about Poland and about football in general.
Smudge footballer Stali Mielec was short-lived, but it was in her colors that he made his debut in Extraclass in 1970. In 3 years, Mielec Steel, already without it, won its first, absolutely sensational Polish championship. "Silesian and capital never thought Stal Mielec would have a master" – among another things, specified banners were carried by residents of my town respective years before my birth.
However, this episode from the life of the deceased did not substance as much as the next visit to Mielec, already as a coach. He included the squad in the first half of the 1990s, erstwhile the Polish Aviation Plants collapsed and the era of “the creators” began, who rapidly turned out to be hochsztaplers. The victim of 1 of these was Steel Mielec. But before that, he visited the FKS after years Franciszek Smuda, fresh after the German school of trainers and with... mediocre cognition of Polish. This became the subject of anecdotes and followed him almost to the end of his coaching career, nevertheless he kept Steel in the league, although it seemed impossible. He introduced quite a few news to the training, and his preferred offensive football resulted in respective key victories.
And that's erstwhile his large adventure with the Łódź Widzew began. Angry and suspicious of Stala footballers after defeating Legia Warszawa, he decided to accept an offer from RTS and led him to 2 awesome league victories. 1 of them without a single defeat in the season. It was Smuda who “directed” the game of the century in the Polish league, or celebrated 2-3 Legia with Widzew on Łazienkowska, which was watched by the full of Poland. In order to make people aware of the importance of this event, it is worth to mention the communicative about Lech's most faithful fans. Since it was 1 of the last queues and all the meetings were held simultaneously, a whole... 100 people came to the Railwayr's game, and they are inactive walking in the "real ones". The remainder watched the Legion-Vidzew on TVP. It can be said that where Smuda appeared, there was something like the “end of the era”. Stali Mielec prolonged the agony, Widzew (and Polish club ball) gave the last group phase of the Champions League for many years, while his failed adventure with the representation ended the era of the game "without large names", due to the fact that then for respective years we only played "left".
Surely, the trainer's resilience to all kinds of "correctities" that, through the increasing infiltration of the phenomenon by mass media, mastered football deserves attention. erstwhile he visited Mielec just after leaving Stala from the championship, fans throwing snowballs at him fired: “Malina would have planted here [if not me]”, as all Poland saw in Gol magazine. He could besides say that he owed much to God and was a believer. He was immune to attacks on his half-life (which in any places was truly fatal) and even to geopolitical change, erstwhile in preparation for the Euro 2012 he wondered how we would end up in a match with the russian Union. Francis Smuda was surely a colourful figure, who will forever associate with certain experiences characteristic of Polish reality. Therefore, it deserves a good word and memory not only in Łódź, Kraków and Warsaw, but besides in Mielec, where it moved into the world, twice.
Tomasz Jankowski
Think Poland, No. 35-36 (25.08-1.09.2024)
