If another day is worth another dollar, then a week is worth seven dollars, or 19 złotych 74 grosze if you’re Polish.
In Poland 19 złotych 74 grosze will get you half a litre of vodka, 80 cigarettes, six saucepans or a lot of bread. It’s temporal equivalent will get you another round of Ekstraklasa and another edition of Szybka Piłka, which this week made one yearn for a couple of the aforementioned material items. HINT: not the saucepans or the bread.
After a fairly pleasant introduction to Polish football last week with a raft of goals, volleys and fancy freekicks, this week saw the standard plummet.
Wisła Kraków stayed on top of the table but had their lead slashed by playing out a tedious 1-1 draw with Polonia Bytom. Bytom’s goal came from a neat pull back from the left to Marek Bażik, who swept the ball from the edge of the box into the bottom right corner.
Goal of the week perhaps? Not if you’re Szybka Piłka pundit and Mick McCarthy look-alike Maciej Szczęsny. Has anyone else ever had a face this flat and this long? Probably not, but his son is the goalkeeper for the Arsenal youth team, so he should be able to afford surgery soon.
Wisła’s Ronaldinho look-alike Junior Diaz then rifled a volley into the top corner and was incorrectly ruled offside. Luckily for them their number 86,Piotr Ćwielong scrambled the ball over the line in the closing minutes to salvage a point.
Now you might think Piotr Ćwielong is a bit of a tit for choosing to be number 86, and you’d be right, but by that logic a lot of professional footballers in Poland are tits.
Legia Warszawa don’t have a number one in their squad, but they do have a 78, an 82 and an 88. It was their number 19 and 32 though that helped them to a 2-0 victory over Lechia Gdańsk. Takesure Chinyama and Miroslav Radović shouldn’t take too much credit for the win though, as that was mostly down to Gdańsk’s piss poor defending.
Ruch Chorzów might look a bit camp, what with having a huge red heart in the middle of their shirts, but they beat Cracovia 2-0 to keep hold on second place. The most interesting thing about this game though was the first goalscorer’s name, Wojciech Grzyb, which can translate as Wojciech Fungus if you want it to.
Oh, and their goalkeeper, Krzysztof Pilarz, wears the number 80.
Korona Kielce are fast becoming my favourite team in Poland. Not only do they have a retro yellow and red striped kit, but they score great own goals, have a number 37, are nicknamed “Złocisto-Krwiści” (“Golden Bloody”) and commit hundreds of outrageously dangerous fouls.
They drew 1-1 with Śląsk Wrocław this week and their opponents were the only team that got reduced to 10 men when Piotr Celeban hacked off Edi Andradina’s boot when he was clean through. Andradina scored six minutes later to put Kielce within spitting distance of three points, but an 89th minute goal from Wrocław ensured the Golden Bloody didn’t move any higher than 9th in the table.
I know it’s worthy of censure, but one of the best things about Ekstraklasa is the fouling. Feet go in well above waist level, challenges from behind, often two footed, are a staple of the games, and red cards are few and far between. There are plenty of face offs too, and mystery man Jarosław Szostek seems to be a regular feature on Szybka Piłka who comes on at the end solely to talk us through a reel of fouls and berate the standard of Polish refereeing.
I’m guessing he’s an ex-referee himself. If anyone knows anything more concrete about Mr Szostek, please let me know.
The other games were all fairly forgettable. Here’s the full list of results:
Results
KGHM Zagłębie Lubin 1-1 GKS Bełchatów
Legia Warszawa 2-0 Lechia Gdańsk
Arka Gdynia 0-0 Polonia Warszawa
Korona Kielce 1-1 Śląsk Wrocław
Lech Poznań 1-0 Odra Wodzisław
Ruch Chorzów 2-0 Cracovia Kraków
Piast Gliwice 0-0 Jagiellonia Białystok
Wisła Kraków 1-1 Polonia Bytom
The top
Wisła Kraków - 19
Ruch Chorzów - 15
Legia Warszawa - 14
Lech Poznań - 13
Polonia Bytom -13