Poland

The Polish Football Federation was founded after World War in December 1919 when the country became independent.

Edward Cetnarowski was the founder and the first president of the Poland national football team. By the year of 1923 the team had already stood on its own feet, because football was quite popular in Poland, and the Polish Football Association became a member of FIFA. Poland took part in the Olympic Games in 1924 in Paris. Then the Cup of Poland was held, where Wisla defeated Sparta 2-1. In 1927 the head office of the Polish football association moved to Warsaw.

The team reached success for the first time in the Olympic Games in Berlin where Poland finished fourth. The team reached 1/8 finals in the next championship but lost to Brazil 5-6.

After World War Poland participated in the World Cups and European championships but met little success. In the early 1970s the team scored a success, winning in the Olympic Games in Munich, then finished second in Montreal and finished third in the World Cup in 1974. Wlodzimierz Lubanski, Kazimierz Deyna, Grzegorz Lato, Robert Gadocha, Jan Tomaszewski were the strongest footballers of that time and Kazimierz Gorsky was the head coach.

In 1978 World Cup Poland finished fifth and that was a failure. The squad managed to get the third place in 1982, beating France 3-2, in that game Zbigniew Boniek, the best ever Polish footballer, played. Poland failed in getting to 1/8 finals in Mexico in 1986 and had little success until the 1992 Barcelona Olympics being a runner-up there.

Poland can be proud of its youth football. They won 1993 World Cup, finished second in 1999 and in 2001 the team won Continental U18 championship for juniors under 18. Reinforcement with young footballers helped Poland to play in the main tournament of 2002 and 2006 World Cups.

In Euro 2008 Poland fell short of their fans expectation and didn’t manage to succeed in their qualifying group.

Hosting the European Championship in 2012 Poland flopped at their group sharing points with Greece and Russia and yielding the way to quarterfinals to the Czech Republic.