Like many a footballer I’ve been on the move this summer.
Despite pining for a move away from the dreariness of Portugal to glamorous England, fate and the recession combined to boot my travel-wary ass into eastern Europe’s most westernised country: Poland.
After spending last year watching what was for the most part woeful Portuguese football, I thought 2009/10 would be kinder to me.
Surely I’d finally be allowed to watch the best league in the world again. And scoff as you might at the idea that the Premiership is the best league in the world, but until you’ve regularly watched European league matches involving teams not in the Champions League or Europe League you won’t appreciate exactly how good the Premiership is.
But no. Here I am in Poland.
UEFA’s coefficient ranks Portugal’s Liga Sagres the 10th best in Europe. It ranks Poland’s Ekstraklasa 25th. That’s worse than the Cypriot, Israeli, Norwegian…and Scottish leagues.
The tidings aren’t good, but then neither is UEFA’s coefficient system which ranks leagues according to their teams’ performances in the Champions League and Europe League (the old UEFA Cup) over the last five seasons. When you consider the number of English, Spanish and Italian teams allowed into these competitions it’s no wonder they become a bit of hegemony.
Until teams get more coefficient points they won’t get more teams into Europe. But until they get more teams into Europe they probably won’t get more coefficient points.
That’s because even though the number of teams a country has in these competitions are taken into account, if a country has three teams in the Champions League it’s much more likely that one of them will do well than if it only has one team in the mix.
Anyhow, it was with some trepidation that I tuned into “Szybka Piłka” (literally “Fast Ball”), Poland’s Match of the Day, on Sunday night. I’d seen parts of Poland’s 3-0 humiliation by Slovenia on Wednesday night, a game which led to coach Leo Beenhakker’s sacking, and was expecting a host of similarly poor displays to be on show in the league.
However, I was pleasantly surprised.
Despite being a highlights show it was packed with long-range shots, careering runs, bags of energy, decent volleys, free kicks flying into top corners and crunching tackles.
Furthermore it was packed with passion, which was the most obviously lacking element in Portugal’s lethargic Sunday afternoon kickabouts.
Unlike Match of the Day, Szybka Piłka devotes an equal amount of time to each game in what must be a hangover from Communism, and seems distinctly against letting you watch a replay of anything. It also left highlights of some of the bigger teams - Wisła Kraków, Legia Warszawa - until last, which was a refreshing change.
Where the show really excels though is in its avant-garde amalgamation of highlights and interviews. Instead of waiting until the end of the game to show interviews with the players and managers, it intersplices them with the action, putting relevant comments on just after the actual incidents.
So when Manuel Arboleda headed in Lech Poznań’s third goal to drag them back from two down against Jagiełłonia Białystok, we get his ecstatic reaction immediately.It might sound rubbish, but it works really well and makes up somewhat for the lack of replays.
Highlights included the aforementioned five goal thriller, Mouhamadou Traore’s mazy run late in the game that allowed Dariusz Jackiewicz to net a minute after coming on for Zagłębie Lubin in a 1-0 win against Polonia Warszawa. And a couple of stunning free kick goals from Dariusz Pawlusiński and Bartosz Ława as Cracovia and Arka Gdynia drew 1-1.
Another highlight was the introduction of Jarosław Szostek (I don’t know who he is and couldn’t find anything to enlighten me on Google) late in the show to talk us through a five minute reel of tackles from behind, feet hitting heads and a 22-man brawl, all of which went unpunished and were oddly not included in any of the previous highlights.
UEFA can shove its coefficient up its arse. If this isn’t significantly better than Portuguese football I’m Leo Beenhakker’s P45.