Silesian Football

If there was anywhere in the country which might be described as the ‘hot-bed’ of Polish football then you are in it. The Katowice conglomeration is home to a number of clubs, two of which currently reside in Poland’s top division: the Ekstraklasa. The area is also home to Poland’s old national stadium – the imposing Stadion Slaski (Silesia Stadium) in Chorzow. Despite this Katowice will not be the venue for any of EURO 2012 as Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw were chosen as host cities.

Poland is a country with a rich football heritage, fanatical supporters and a major European tournament to look forward to hosting. However there have been major problems in recent times with corruption, incompetent administration of the game and a pretty serious hooligan issue. So while watching a game here is not discouraged, do exercise caution when attending a game particularly the local derby between the conglomeration’s two major clubs – Ruch Chorzów and Górnik Zabrze.

Poland as a national side has finished 3rd in 2 World Cups and the older fans among you will remember the likes of Grzegorz Lato (Golden Boot winner at the West German World Cup of 1974), Kazimierz Deyna and Zbigniew Boniek (one half of the great Juventus midfield pairing with Michel Platini). The national side can boast some talented players such as Arsenal’s Wojciech Szczesny and Borrusia Dortmund’s Jakub Blaczykowski but the depth of the squad is poor and the trainer, Franciszek Smuda has tried to remedy this by recruiting foreign players with Polish ancestry. The lack of competitive matches and this wholesale rebuilding of the team has Poles thankful that they qualify for Euro 2012 by way of being hosts but fearful that this will result in a series of high profile thrashings at the hands of some of the continent’s bigger sides.

At club level there are some positive signs for the future. With the national side typically recruiting players plying their trade in foreign leagues, Polish clubs are even worse off and this is reflected in the fact that their last representatives in the group stage of the Champions League were Widzew Łódz in 1996. The 2011/12 season did see champions Wisła Kraków reach the last CL qualifying round before dropping into the Europa League where they were joined by Legia Warsaw and this improvement along with a number of new stadia openings has given the Polish supporters something to be positive about. That said the standard of the Polish league (Ekstraklasa) is poor, the smell of corruption continues to hang over the game (currently over 100 people, including club officials and refs, have been arrested in connection with corruption dating back over many years) and attendances are very low in comparison to western European leagues.

While we would not wish to discourage you from taking in a game here, we do recommend you exercise a certain amount of caution. To give you a start, here is an introduction to the conglomeration’s major clubs and a round-up of how and where to watch the games.

We’ll no doubt make enemies for life with this, but the area’s biggest and most successful club is probably Górnik Zabrze (we can hear the pages of this magazine crackling now as Ruch Chorzów fans warm themselves by the flames at an evening kick-off). The fact that Górnik means miner should tell you all you need to know about the traditions of a club that has 14 Polish league titles to its name as well as six Polish Cups. Created in post-war Zabrze by the merger of four other clubs, Górnik picked up their first league title in 1957 and the next 11 years never saw them outside of the top three, including an unprecedented five titles on the bounce between 1963 and 1967. Their most memorable night probably came in 1970 when they fell 2-1 to Manchester City in the final of the old Cup-Winners’ Cup. Despite their first ever relegation in 1978, a swift return saw them add a further four titles in a row between 1985 and 1988. Aside from a close run when they lost the title by two points in 1995 to Legia Warsaw (a campaign that came down to a controversial last game against the eventual champions, and which saw Górnik finish the game with eight men), Górnik have failed to reach the heights of the communist era. Of the players who have represented Górnik over the years the most famous are Włodzimierz Lubański (the scorer of Poland’s goal at Wembley in 1973, which knocked England out of the World Cup) and the Polish league’s all-time record goal scorer Ernest Pohl, who scored 186 top-flight goals between 1953 and 1967. Górnik’s rather bare-bones stadium is now named after this legendary goalscorer, having originally been built in 1934 as 'Adolf Hitler Stadium'. Development is currently ongoing to build a new 32,000 all-seater stadium although at the moment there is very limited space with capacity around 3,000 for a traditionally well-supported team.

Górnik are not the only side to hold 14 Polish league titles, a record that is equalled by their great local rivals Ruch Chorzów. The club, under the name of Ruch Hajduki, were one of the founder members of the Polish league in 1927 and went on to win the league five times before the merger of the Hajduki Wielkie and Chorzów districts saw them adopt the name Ruch Chorzów (Ruch meaning ‘movement’ in Polish is thought to signify the connection of the club with the Silesian Uprising movement). The outbreak of WWII saw the Nazis shut the club down and replace it with Bismarckhütter Ballspiel Club but with the war over Ruch Chorzów returned to form part of the newly created Polish league. A hat-trick of league titles arrived between 1951 and 1953 with a further two championships in the 1960s, three in the 1970s and a final hurrah in 1989.

Ruch’s most famous (or possibly infamous) player depending on who you speak to was the Polish/German Ernst Wilimowski, who, after having moved from the German 1. FC Kattowitz to the Polish Ruch Hajduki in 1933 went on to help the club win the Polish title five times in six years between 1933 and 1938, scoring 112 goals in 86 games. Representing Poland, Wilimowski scored four times against Brazil in the 1938 World Cup Finals and when war broke out had a record of 21 goals in 22 international matches. As a Silesian and native German, Wilimowski was valued by the Nazis and went onto play for 1. FC Kattowitz and the German national side during the war years before settling in Germany after the war, where he continued to rack up the goals despite being well into his thirties. His legacy is one that is much debated, but as a footballer he is still remembered as the man who scored a record 10 goals in a Polish league game - a record that still stands today.

The post-communist era has seen Ruch Chorzów bounce between the top two-levels of the Polish league, and the club now seems to be concentrating on developing its own, homegrown players rather than joining in the investment-driven chase for success. Surprisingly, even though Chorzów is home to Poland’s national stadium, Ruch find themselves playing in a rather run-down 10,000-seater arena; most of which is uncovered.

The conglomeration can also boast at least another four clubs: GKS Katowice, Polonia Bytom, Piast Gliwice and Zagłębie Sosnowiec. Three of these, Polonia Bytom, GKS Katowice and Piast Gliwice occupy spots in the 1st division (I liga) - which is Poland’s second level - and Zagłębie Sosnowiec in the regionalised 2nd division (II liga).

One thing to be very aware of when attending a football match in Poland is the host club’s relationship with their opponents. Supporters tend to have friendships and alliances with supporters of certain other clubs and at these match-ups the atmosphere is incredibly convivial, in a way which might strike foreign visitors as peculiar. Alternatively, if the host is playing either one of their own or one of their ‘friend’s’ rivals it can be not far short of all-out warfare. For the record, GKS Katowice and Górnik Zabrze are friends. On the other side of the fence are Ruch Chorzów, while Piast Gliwice and GKS Katowice don’t like each other either at all. Górnik Zabrze (and by default GKS Katowice) don’t like the Three Crowns clubs (Wisła Krakow, Śląsk Wrocław and Lechia Gdańsk). Confused? Don’t be. Knowing the difference can have a major influence on your enjoyment of the day. For those finding these relationships a little hard to understand comfort yourself with the thought that when Legia Warsaw come to town you won’t need to consult your pocket ‘relationships’ book – everyone in this part of the world hates Legia.