Legia Warszawa and Wisla Krakow start their Europa League group stage campaigns on Thursday.

Legia’s first group match is away against group favorites PSV Eindhoven.  Legia qualified after their improbable win against Spartak Moscow in the 4th Qualifying Round (2-2 home, 3-2 away).  In the third qualifying round they had over come Gaziantepspor (1-0 away, 0-0 home).

PSV begun in the 4th qualifying round, where they defeated Austrian side SV Ried 5-0 in the home leg after a 0-0 away draw.  The Dutch entered the competition with a coefficient of 74.025 compared to Legia’s 5.183.  The PSV squad is valued at 75,350,000 € and the Legia squad is valued at 23,300,000 €.  PSV’s most valuble and dangerous player appears to be Belgian Dries Martens who has scored 7 goals and assisted on 4 in 5 Erdivisie matches.  PSV are in 5th place in the Erdivisie with 3 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss.  They are undefeated in 6 matches in all competitions.

Polish National Team keeper Przemyslaw Tyton is on a season long loan at PSV from Roda JC and has so far played 3 full Erdivisie matches.

Wisla will begin at home against Danish club Odense BK.  Wisla dropped into the Europa League after being eliminated from the Champions League by Cypriot side APOEL (1-0 home, 1-3 away) in the play-off round.

Although seen as the weakest side in Group K OB did defeat Greek side Panathinakikos (1-1 home, 4-3 away) in Champions League qualifying round 3 before being eliminated by Spanish club Villarreal (1-0 home, 0-3 away).  The Danish side entered with a coefficient of 18.610 compared to Wisla’s 10.183.  The OB squad is valued at 22,200,000 € and the Wisla squad is valued at 25,450,000 €.  OB are 3rd in the Superligaen with 4 wins, 2 draws, and 2 losses.

Poland was seconds away from recording a historic first win against the German national team.  But despite a result and match that showed many positives, most Polish fans feel gutted at the way the win slipped away with the last kick of the game.

In the first half the Polish players found themselves defending for long spells and had the brilliant Wojciech Szczesny to thank for keeping the ball out of the net on several occasions.  But they were also able to launch some good counter attacks.  Three such attacks resulted in good chances for Slawomir Peszko but each time Tim Wiese did enough to keep the Polish winger from scoring.

It was one of those counter attacks that led to Poland scoring their first goal against Germany for 31 years.  In the 54th minute Jakub Blaszczykowski dribbled the ball up the right side of the field and timed his pass to Dariusz Dudka perfectly.  With Wise closing him down quickly Dudka had the presence of mind to flick the ball to his right where Robert Lewandowski was able to beat two defenders to it and slot it into the empty net.

In the 68th minute Arkadiusz Glowacki’s late tackle on Thomas Müller gave the Germans a penalty. Glowacki received a yellow card and Toni Kroos made no mistake from the spot, it was 1-1.

Glowacki's second yellow came in the 81st minute and it looked like a draw would be the best Poland could hope for.  But Wise's foul on Pawel Brozek in the 89th brought a penalty and even the players could not help celebrating before it was taken.  Blaszczykowski put it in and a historic result was within their grasp.

But despite facing defeat in a friendly match that came only a few days after they qualified for Euro 2012, it was the German players who found another gear.  The continued to put Poland under considerable pressure.  That pressure paid off in the 93rd minute when Müller received the ball on the right.  Jakub Wawrzyniak slipped at the worst possible moment and the Bayern Munich striker exploited it with a perfect pass to an unmarked Cacau.

Goals available at MaXxed Football Forums

Debutant Damien Perquis will start from the first minute in the Poland Germany friendly match in Gdansk today.

Lineup:
Szczesny - Wasilewski, Perquis, Glowacki, Wawrzyniak - Dudka, Murawski - Blaszczykowski, Obraniak, Peszko - Lewandowski

Match

Poland will hope for a first win against Germany when they take them on for the 17th time at the brand new PGE Arena in Gdansk. The record stands at 0-4-12 with goals at 7-12.

Poland s last match against Germany was at Euro 2008 where they lost 2-0 after Lukas Podolski struck twice for the Germans. It was Poland s debut at the Euro finals.

Previous to that Poland played Germany at the 2006 World Cup, where they lost 1-0 to a 91st minute Oliver Neuville goal.

The last time Poland drew against Germany was 1 June 1978 at the World Cup in Argentina. The match ended 0-0 and featured the likes of Jan Tomaszewski, Kazimierz Deyna, Grzegorz Lato, and Andrzej Szarmach.

Match

Despite a red card for Ludovic Obraniak in the 70th minute Poland managed a 1-1 draw with Mexico in Warsaw. Pawel Brozek gave Polska the lead in the 26th minute only for Javier Hernández to even it up in the 35th. The stale mate lasted for the rest of the match. Poland came under considerable pressure after Obraniak s red card but held on for the draw.

Match Stats

View the new Polish Soccer database at: http://polishsoccer.net/joomla/

Currently it has the 2011-2012 Ekstraklasa Table, Results, and League Stats.

More is being added everyday so check back offten.

A 2-2 draw at home last week was good, but no one gave Legia Warszawa a chance in Moscow.  Website transfermarkt.co.uk values the Legia squad at 23.300.000 € compared to 78.550.000 € for Spartak.  The Russian club is ranked 39th in Europe while Legia sit at 196.  This was supposed to be the end of the road.

After 27 minutes Spartak were 2-0 up (4-2 agg).  This was the end of the road.

But with nothing to lose Legia attacked.  It only took one minute to for Michał Kucharczyk to give them a lifeline.  Maciej Rybus made it all square in the 43 and Legia headed into the break with everything still to play for.

Legia were the stronger side in the second half, but they had to wait until the 92nd minute for the go ahead goal.  It came through Janusz Gol as extra time loomed.

Legia will now join Wisła Kraków in the Europa League group stage.

Europa League 2011-2012

Wisla Krakow has failed once again to advance to the group stage of the Champions League. After winning the home leg 1-0 the Krakow club lost 1-3 in Nicosia.

APOEL pressed forward from the beginning and created several chances. In the 29th minute the pressure paid off for them when they took the lead thanks to a Sergei Pareiko own goal. Brazilian Aílton made it 2-0 in the 54th after an assist from Macedonian Ivan Tričkovski. However, luck smiled on Wisla in the 71st when Cezary Wilk scored after a nice pass from Ivica Iliev. They were through on away goals.

The joy was shattered in the 87th minute. Tričkovski once again picked out Aílton giving the Cypriot Champions a 3-2 aggregate win.

Champions League 2011-2012

On Friday Lech Poznan won 3-0 for the second game in a row, this time against Ruch Chorzów. Artjoms Rudņevs scored two and took his tally to 8 for the season. Last season the Latvian scored 20 goals in 40 matches, 11 of which were in the Ekstraklasa.

In Saturday’s matches Wisła Kraków could only muster a 0-0 draw away at Korona Kielce. Meanwhile, Widzew Łódź picked up their first win of the season despite missing a penalty against Polonia Warszawa.

Śląsk Wrocław continued to keep pace with Lech, winning 2-1 at Legia Warszawa on Sunday. Sebastian Mila was very impressive in the first half setting up both goals and causing the Legia defenders all sorts of problems. Legia had long spells of pressure, especially in the second half. But it took until the 77th minute for Danijel Ljuboja to finally beat Marián Kelemen and the equalizer never came.

Round 4
19 August 2011
Zagłębie Lubin	0 : 0	Podbeskidzie Bielsko-Biała	6128
Lech Poznań	3 : 0	Ruch Chorzów	4000
20 August 2011
Górnik Zabrze	1 : 0	GKS Bełchatów	3500
Widzew Łódź	1 : 0	Polonia Warszawa	6600
Korona Kielce	0 : 0	Wisła Kraków	9246
21 August 2011
Jagiellonia Białystok	2 : 1	Cracovia	4168
Legia Warszawa	1 : 2	Śląsk Wrocław	18520
21 August 2011
Lechia Gdańsk	0 : 0	Łódzki KS	22624

Welcome to PolishSoccer.net. This site has been on the Internet in one form or another since the fall of 1998. After having watched the World Cup in France I became interested in how Poland had fared in qualifying. That lead to me tracking how the National Team was doing in qualifying for Euro 2000. As I looked for this information I noticed that there was no good English language website for Polish football. It is then that I decided to make a Polish Soccer website.

At first I used Geocities to host the site. In 2003 I decided to register the Polishsoccer.net domain name.

This is a hobby for me and unfortunately I don’t get to spend as much time on it as I would like. In fact over the last two years it has been rather neglected. But I have decided to do a redesign and now am really eager to update as much of the site as possible.

One major addition is the blog. It will be used to archive all my posts from the Polishsoccer.net front page. The blog is also a place for any visitors to comment on the site, so if you have any suggestions or ideas please post a comment at: http://polishsoccernet.blogspot.com/

Here is a list of the pages I have managed to add and update so far:

2010 - 2011 Ekstraklasa Table (including top scorers chart and other stats)

2010 - 2011 Europa League (results for all matches involving Polish clubs)

GKS Bełchatów Team Page

Górnik Zabrze Team Page

Lech Poznań Team Page

Legia Warszawa Team Page

Polonia Warszawa Team Page

Widzew Łódź Team Page

Wisła Kraków Team Page

More coming soon.


- Dominik