Long road to Euro 2012

The home turf of modern football is England, and Poland does not compare to it in the field. Some consolation may, however, come from the fact that Polish football was born nowhere else but in Kraków!

The sources prove that the first true football was brought to Poland late in the 19th century by Dr Henryk Jordan, a physician, promoter of sports, and pioneer of physical education. Following his initiative, training grounds were established on the Błonia Common Green in a park that received Dr Jordan’s name. A handful of school teams competed there as early as 1890. Yet the people of Kraków had to wait until 1894 for an authentic, professional football match. In that year, on 14th July at 5:36 p.m. – that is in the sixth minute of Sokół Kraków vs. Sokół Lwów – the first documented goal in Poland was scored. The event might have had greater historical and symbolic significance, had it been scored by the Kraków team. Unfortunately, the scorer played for Lemberg (Lwów). This was unsurprising, as there was a fantastic coach in Lemberg – an engineer named Niedzielski, who was rumoured once to have seen the English playing football in Odessa...