The Kings Of Poland-The Story Of Polonia Warsaw part VIII
- tomikorkeamaki
- Dec 29, 2022
- 5 min read
This is part VIII of The Story Of Polonia Warsaw. We complete our second season in First Division in Poland in this part. You can find the earlier parts here: https://tomikorkeamaki.wixsite.com/impactsub
Naprzód!

Un-cry these tears
I cried so many nights
Un-break my heart
My heart
- Toni Braxton
The last time checked upon our Polonia side, we were resting during the winter break. We set our goal to achieve automatic promotion to the Ekstraklasa and the feeling among the squad was high.
Losing our promising young full-back Kacper Zarejko last summer had left his position up in the air and finding a proper replacement for that position was a difficult task. During the winter transfer window, we did some searching and we finally might found an answer.
Once again we snapped a player from the free agent market and this time it was a former Toulouse FC man Sam Sanna. We hope that he brings some regularity to the position and turns out to be a good bargain.

We started well after the winter break, crushing Ruch 4-1 and had a nice few weeks being unbeaten in four matches. Then something happened and we quite not know what it was actually. We were going against our biggest rival Miedz in an away match and the stakes were high. The winner would have the upper hand in the race for the second automatic promotion place.
There is no place for excuses, we sh*t the bed in grand fashion losing 3-0. To top this performance, we lost three days later to Korona 2-0. The most miserable three-day span in Polonia Warsaw's journey so far. In the next six games, we only managed to win two games. Miedz on the other hand, went cruising and flew away from our sights in the standings as we were held to drawing games.
A strong finish in May was only a moral victory as we had lost our battle for the second place in the standings already. Now just needed to make sure, we don´t lose our home-field advantage in the promotion playoffs by finishing 5th or 6th place.

Before we go into the mayhem of promotion playoffs, I want to highlight one game from the regular season. That is our home game against Gornik Leczna. After a spell of poor performances, we came into this came feeling not so confident. After the 90 minutes had gone, we had just won 5-0 and made Polish Football history.
Our main force of goals, Bóg (transl. God), as we call him in the clubhouse, Jan Los, had just put up a show on the field. Scoring all of our five goals in the match out of 8 shots on target, he put himself into the history books of Polish football. I just love the narrative that this game sometimes produces. As stated many times already in the course of our journey, Jan Los has already retired from football in real life but he is becoming an FM legend which I will forever remember.

This is how we ended up after the final game of the regular season. Our stumbling in April cost us greatly and in the end, being "just" six points behind Miedz does a favour for us as it should have been even more. We did better than last year, now finishing 3rd place (6th place last year) and getting the home-field advantage in promotion playoffs. The first match would be against Korona and our defeat against them in March was still fresh in our memory.

Our game against Korona would become an instant classic in Polonia Warsaw's history. Fidziukiewicz got the game's first goal right after 6 minutes but only a minute later Korona was level. It took only 16 minutes for Korona to score a second goal and we had to start pushing.
It already started to look like an early nightmare as we just couldn´t get a goal and didn´t even create enough good chances. Then Kamil Chilinski, our other winter addition to cover the forwards, came in from the bench to level the game. We decided to not settle for a draw after 90 minutes and then force an extra time so we kept pushing and this time it paid off. Our young promising winger Jakub Pawlik slotted a beautiful goal to push us to the Promotion Playoffs final again!

The Promotion Playoff final was against Warta Poznan who we had just beaten 1-0 in the final weeks of the regular season. We had the home-field advantage this time in the promotion final, unlike last season, so we felt confident. Sam Sanna was unavailable after picking up too many yellow cards so it took off a little bit of confidence but we thought we could cover it.
Warta scored the first goal but we managed to draw level quite fast. Then the worst thing happened. Warta scored another goal and just as we tried to get over the shock of the goal, Filip Arak was sent off after 22 minutes after a stupid challenge and we knew we were in big trouble. The worst time of the year to get sent off!
We just couldn´t handle the pressure from Warta and in the end, they cruised to promotion with ease and won fairly 4-2. This meant that we have now lost two promotion playoff finals in a row. The pain was real. Once again we left the field as the losers of the final game of the season

We have now experienced two heartbreaking defeats in the Promotion Playoffs finals in back-to-back years and it has broken our hearts into million pieces. Last year's success was a surprise but we had so high hopes for this season and that´s why it hurts more. Of course, we also have to realise the fact that we might have overachieved a bit this season and we would have had a difficult time in the Ekstraklasa next season. I feel like we have to be the dominant force in the First Division so that we know we won´t be completely pushed over in the Ekstraklasa when we get promoted.
It´s time to rest and start thinking about a new approach to our game. Summer will once again bring new problems as we are about to lose Onuoah and it feels like some of the other youngsters might become unsettled as the big clubs might be coming knocking on our door about their availability.
Tactically I feel like we are in a position where we need a new approach to our game. We need to be more efficient up front and more solid in the back. This means we need to take time to think over our squad and how we want to play. First, we need to sit down and play some 90´s Toni Braxton and cry to heal our broken hearts, again.
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