Huge euphoria east of the Oder
All of Poland gets drunk on the Lewandowski transfer
By Thomas Dudek
07/19/2022, 8:40 p.m
Robert Lewandowski is a superstar in his native Poland. It is therefore not surprising that his move to FC Barcelona is a big topic. It is a transfer with which the Poles also have high hopes.
What happens when a professional soccer player, who is considered by far the best of all time during his playing days in his home country and who also holds the second-highest civilian state medal, switches to FC Barcelona? A club that may be in some trouble but is still one of the best known and most popular clubs in the world.
Of course it is a topic in all the news programs in the country. Whether at the state TVP, which announced in its news program that “Lewandowski has joined his new colleagues in Barcelona”, or in the Sunday talk show a large private broadcaster, in which even politicians commented on the national hero’s move to Barcelona.
All of this underscores once again the importance of Lewandowski in his home country of Poland. And this is obvious, especially in the Polish sports press. You will not only learn that the 45 million euros that the Catalans are paying to FC Bayern is the largest transfer fee ever paid for a Polish footballer, but also everything about Lewandowski’s steps in the past few days.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s his farewell to the German record champions’ team, his arrival in the USA, where FC Barcelona is currently on tour and will also be playing a test match against his archrival Real Madrid next Sunday, or that first workout with his new teammates. Everything is meticulously documented and described by the Polish press. Even Lewandowski’s smile, “which, in contrast to the last few days in Munich, seems relaxed again”. The fact that the first matchday of the local Ekstraklasa took place this weekend was almost forgotten.
And of course the opinions and comments of experts and long-time companions of Lewandowski should not be missing. “I expected the transfer to take place in mid-July. That’s what happened now. And in the end there are only winners on all sides,” said Zbigniew Boniek, Poland’s football star of the 1980s and a longtime player until last year President of the Polish Football Association PZPN. “Knowing his character, I knew that he planned everything perfectly, that there is no room for random coincidences,” said Adam Nawałka, who was Lewandowski’s national team coach until 2018.
Yes, even Cezary Kucharski, Lewandowski’s longtime manager and business partner, who has been in a headline-grabbing legal battle with the world-class striker for several years, commented on the transfer of his former protégé. Kucharski says that this will not be the last contract in Robert Lewandowski’s career, but that he will play in the USA later.
But despite this constant coverage, one should not think that the transfer of Robert Lewandowski was the dominant sporting topic in Poland. Even if the striker used the Nations League games of the Polish national team to force his move to Catalonia with statements made there. And the reason for this is the war in Ukraine, which also left its mark on Polish football. After it became known in June that the Polish national player Maciej Rybus, who has been playing in Russia for years, is not leaving Russia as was publicly expected, but instead is switching from Lokomotiv to Spartak in Moscow out of consideration for his Russian wife, a wave of indignation broke out in Poland , which will ultimately cost Rybus participation in the World Cup in Qatar.
Anger at German journalists
Robert Lewandowski’s change also means a break in German-Polish football relations. Stars like Jan Furtok, Jakub Błaszczykowski, Łukasz Piszczek and Lewandowski, who have been playing in the Bundesliga since the 1980s, have won many fans in Poland. But alienation set in as early as 2021, when Robert Lewandowski came close to surpassing Gerd Muller’s 40-goal record. Which the Polish striker finally managed to do on the last day of that season.
The calls from Dietmar Hamann and the “Spiegel” journalist Peter Ahrens at the time, some of which were not meant to be taken seriously, that Lewandowski should give up his record, triggered a wave of outrage in Poland that was even PiS-related and otherwise non-sports media captured. The Polish interpretation was clear: the Germans have a problem when a Pole of all people beats the record set by a German.
Finally the Ballon d’Or
However, the Spanish league can now look forward to it. And not just because Robert Lewandowski is a world star. As early as 2014, a survey showed that the two most popular foreign clubs among Poles are Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. With Barça, Lewandowski is only moving to Poland’s second most popular foreign club, but this could perhaps change now. With the change, the Poles are also hoping for compensation for what they see as a different injustice. When not Robert Lewandowski but Lionel Messi won the Ballon d’Or last year, most Polish fans reacted with incomprehension.
Quite a few said that the election would have been different if Lewandowski had not been under contract with a Bundesliga club. “Does the transfer also bring a sporting advantage for Lewandowski? In my opinion, wearing the colors of Catalan pride will make it easier for him to win the longed-for Golden Ball,” wrote 52-time Poland international Kamil Kosowski, who also played in his career Completed 43 competitive games for 1. FC Kaiserslautern, in his column for “Przegląd Sportowy”. This would not only be another personal success for Lewandowski, but also for the Polish fans.