"Yes, victory is sweet but it doesn't necessarily make life any easier the next season or even the next day"
- Phil Jackson
This is part IV of the series about The Story Of Polonia Warsaw and it completes our first season in Liga II. You can find the earlier parts of the series here: https://tomikorkeamaki.wixsite.com/impactsub
I open my Spotify on my phone and select Queen from my playlist. "WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEEEEND!!" echoes through our living room as my wife looks at me in a way that has more questions than answers. I take a sip from my morning coffee and raise my fist into the air: We´ve just won the Polish Liga II with a huge margin and gained promotion! It was a season that we hoped for in our dreams but now when we have achieved it, we face a new question. Are we ready for this?
So how we ended up dominantly winning Liga II? The last time we updated the save, we were on the brink of a winter break and topped the league at the break. Our board expected us to make it to the promotion playoffs and it looked good during the winter break.
At the transfer window during the winter break, we didn´t end up signing anybody. This was mainly because our finances were heading in the wrong direction and we also wanted to promote some youngsters from the youth team. One of them was our young Ukrainian starlet Mykyta Vasin.
Also, last time we talked about facing Legia Warsaw in a friendly match but once again, they answered our friendly request that their "schedule is just too hectic"(=scared). #BeatLegia
The first match after the break was a vital one. We would face the division 2nd placed Olimpia Elblag at home and with a win, we would grow our point difference even more. Even though our "pre-season" matches at the winter break weren´t so admirable, the boys were up for the challenge winning comfortably 4-1.
From there on, we went with a form that you might call "ok". The 1-2 defeat at home against Lech II was a bit concerning as was the 0-0 draw against Radunia at home. It seemed like we couldn´t make our home field the fortress that we would have liked it to be. Eventually, we ended up scoring more goals on the the away field than on home field.
As stated before, we didn´t make any transfers in the winter break and as the transfer window was now closed, we could only look for free-agent signing and we snapped up somebody we had already set our eyes on before the season. We continued our trend of signing players that in real life have already retired from football and this time it was Abukar Mohamed. The Somalian-born Finnish citizen, who has a couple of caps in Finland U21, was a highly praised youngster a few years ago and he played in the Lazio youth system. Injuries eventually were one of the major issues in his footballing career and he was forced to retire. Now we snapped him to Polonia as a backup for midfield.
After scrappy 1-0 victories against Motor Lublin and Hutnik Krakow, we secured the title. I´ve been to Poland many times myself and I really can´t blame our players for celebrating the title for two weeks. I have a sense that a lot of vodka has been consumed. The last home game was played with a full squad, most of the squad probably hangover. For the final game of the season, we did have to put youngsters on the field and the scoreline tells the story.
One of the key contributors to the title was our striker Michał Fidziukiewicz and if I ever meet him in real life, I will shake his hand and thank him. He was a monster in the front line scoring 20 goals in 30 games. He will be 33 years old next season and we can only hope that he can keep at least some of this season's form also next season. Our next best goal scorer was a free-agent signing Jan Los. Happy for him to score 9 goals as he was also setting up others with 6 assists
Overall, I have to be satisfied with the title and promotion but it felt like towards the end of the season that we could have done so much better. We had many games where we had a lot of shots and possession but just a few of them were on target and I feel like in the next level, the results won´t be so forgiving and we might have some troubling times ahead unless we don´t make some changes to the system.
You shoot some, you score some might be our motto as we were the shooting kings of this league having almost over 100 shots more than the second-placed team and we outscored the rest of the league in the goals scored category as well.
One of the goals for this save was trying to not redo the mistakes with finances that the club has done in the past decade in real life. Well, unfortunately, we are strongly heading in that direction. We are currently in debt of almost £500,000. We desperately need a promotion to Ekstraklasa and we have to cut down our ranks. There was no cup competition at the Liga II level and no income from TV money. I don´t expect a lot of increase in that department the next season either but at least we have a chance to make a cup run and raise our attendance numbers.
We are now heading into summer break and we have some tough decisions ahead. Our squad might be ready to battle for relegation but we are ageing fast and need some young blood. The match rules in Liga I gives us some freedom as we are now allowed to field 2 non-EU players and we only have to field one under-21 Polish-born player in the starting XI.
As Phil Jackson said., victory is sweet but it sure does not get easier from here on.
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