Football in Poland

In Poland, football (soccer) is the most popular sport. Over 400,000 Poles play football regularly, while millions more play occasionally. The first professional clubs were founded in the early 1900s and the Polish national football team played its first international match in 1921.

There are hundreds of professional and amateur football teams in Poland. The football teams are organized into the national 1st league and 2nd league, 4 regional 3rd leagues, 18 regional 4th leagues, 49 regional 5th leagues and many more lower level leagues. There are also Polish Cup and Polish Supercup competitions.

History

The history of football in Poland started in the late 19th century with the rising popularity of the new sport. At the time, Polish state was Partitioned though.The first decades of Polish football are connected with the history of Football in Austria and the Austrian Football Association which was founded in 1904.

The first Polish football clubs were Lechia Lwów (1903), Czarni Lwów (1903), Pogoń Lwów (1904), Cracovia Kraków (1906) and Wisła Kraków (1906). The Polish national federation called the Polish Football Union (Polski Związek Piłki Nożnej, PZPN) was founded on December 20, 1919, in Warsaw when 31 delegates elected Edward Cetnarowski as the first president. PZPN joined FIFA in 1923 and UEFA in 1955.

Much like in other European states, football appeared in Poland in the late 19th century. In 1888 Prof. Henryk Jordan, a court physician of the Habsburgs and the pioneer of sports in Poland, opened a sports park in Kraków's "Błonia", a large open space surrounding the demolished city walls of that town. The park, along with the Sokół society founded in 1867, became the main centres to promote sports and healthy living in Poland. It was Jordan who began promoting football as a healthy sport in the open air; some sources also credit him with bringing the first football to Poland from his travels to Brunswick in 1890pl icon cite journal | author=Leszek Mazan | title= Buffalo Bill na Błoniach | journal=Polityka | year=2006 | volume=2544 | issue=9 | pages= 82–84 | url=http://www.polityka.pl/polityka/index.jsp?place=Lead10&news_cat_id=17&news_id=172346&layout=1&forum_id=3270&fpage=Threads&page=text ] . Other sources pl icon cite journal | author=Zbigniew Chmielewski | title= Obok Czarnych znak Pogoni | journal=Polityka | year=2003 | volume=2414 | issue=33 | pages= | url=http://www.lwow.home.pl/sport/sport.html ] mention Dr. Edmund Cenar as the one to bring the first ball and the one to translate The Cambridge Rules and parts of the International Football Association Board regulations to Polish language.

On July 14, 1894 during the Second Sokół Jamboree in Lwów a short football match was played between the Sokół members of Lwów and those from Kraków. It lasted only six minutes and was seen as a curiosity rather than a potentially popular sport. Nevertheless, it was the first recorded football match in Polish historyIn fact there was a previous meeting mentioned by the press in Kraków in 1892, though no details are known] . It was won by the Lwów team after Włodzimierz Chomicki scored the only goal - and the first known goal in Polish history.

This match incited the popularity of the new sport in Poland. Initially the rules and regulations were very simplified, with the size of the field and the ball varying greatly. Despite being discouraged by many educational societies and the state authorities, the new sport gained extreme popularity among pupils of various gymnasiums in Galicia. The first football teams were formed and in 1903–1904 four Lwów-based gymnasiums formed their own sport clubs; the IV Gymnasium for Boys formed a club later renamed to Pogoń Lwów, while the pupils of the I and II State Schools formed the "Sława Lwów" club, later renamed to Czarni Lwów. In the same season the Lechia Lwów was also formed. It is uncertain which of the clubs was created first as they were initially little organized, however the Czarni Lwów are usually credited as being the first Polish professional football team. The following year popularity of the new sport spread to nearby Rzeszów where Resovia Rzeszów was formed, while in German-held part of Poland the 1. FC Katowice and Warta Poznań were formed.

On June 6, 1906 a representation of Lwów youth came to Kraków for a repeat match, this time composed of two already organized teams, the Czarni and the team of the IV Gymnasium. Kraków's representation was badly beaten in both meetings (4:0 and 2:0 respectively). The same summer the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show set up camp at Kraków's Błonia, right outside of the traditional playground area and Jordan's garden. On August 5, 1906 the team of the Kraków-based Jan Sobieski Gymnasium played a match against the British and American members of Buffalo Bill's troupe, winning 1:0. The only goal scored by Stanisław Szeligowski was also the first goal scored by a Polish team in an international meeting. The success led to the popularisation of football in Kraków and to creation of the first Kraków-based professional football team, Cracovia Kraków - initially composed primarily of students of the Jan Sobieski Gymnasium. By the autumn of that year there were already 16 teams in Kraków, including Wisła Kraków. In 1911 a Kraków-based Union of Polish Football for Galicia was formed and entered the Austrian Football Federation. The union inspired the creation of a number of teams, including Polonia Warszawa formed later that year as the first football club in Warsaw.

After the outbreak of World War I, most of the Galician football players, many of them members of either Strzelec or Sokół, joined Piłsudski's Polish Legions. The unit, fighting alongside the Austro-Hungarian Army, fought mostly in various parts of Russian-held Poland, which led to popularisation of the new sport in other parts of Poland. Among the notable clubs started during the war was "Legia", initially a club of the Legions and after the war renamed to Legia Warszawa. After Poland regained her independence, on December 21, 1919 the Polish Football Association (PZPN) was formed. Headed by Edward Centrarowski, it united most of the then-existent Polish football clubs. The league could not be formed due to the Polish-Bolshevik War, but in 1922 the PZPN published the rules of footballpl icon cite book | author =Francis Percy Addington | coauthors =Rudolf Wacek | title =Teorja piłki nożnej (football); praktyczny i teoretyczny przewodnik gry wraz z prawidłami Polskiego Związku Piłki Nożnej | year =1922 | editor = | pages =96 | chapter = | chapterurl = | publisher =M. Bodek | location =Lwów | id = ] and the following year it joined FIFA. In 1921 the league was resumed and the first Champion of Poland was Cracovia Kraków, followed by Pogoń Lwów in 1922, 1923, 1925 and 1926. As Poland was then a fully independent state, in 1921 the Polish national football team was formed. On December 18, 1921 it played its first international match in Budapest against the Hungarian team and was defeated 1:0. In the third international match in Stockholm on May 28, 1922 Poland defeated Sweden 1:2, scoring its first international victory.

In 1955 the PZPN became one of the founding members of UEFA.

European Competitions

UEFA Champions League

The following teams have qualified for elimination rounds in the UEFA Champions League.

*Legia Warsaw (1995-96 - Quarter-finals)

Notes and references

See also

* Sports in Poland
* Polish national football team
* Orange Ekstraklasa
* Młoda Ekstraklasa
* Polish Championship in Football
* Polish Cup
* Polish SuperCup
* Polish Cup (women)
* Polish women's national football team
*
* Polish Roster in World Cup Soccer France 1938
*
* Polish soccer (football) in interwar period
* Football Junior Championships of Poland
* Polish Football League 1927-1939