Images via @LaczyNasPilka and @juventusfcen on Twitter
It’s close to a month since an article was last published on this website, and in that time a lot of transfer movement has occurred, much of it positive when it comes to younger Polish talents such as Maxi Oyedele and Dominik Marczuk, but as for those in the prime or the slightly past-their-peak point of their careers it continues to be a tense last few days of the summer transfer window.
Wojciech Szczęsny, Arkadiusz Milik, Jakub Moder and Jakub Kiwior are to name but a few top Polish players who either already have been or are being offered out by their clubs, and in Szczęsny’s case he is now actually a free agent having agreed to terminate his Juventus contract earlier this month. You look around the top leagues and whilst plenty of Poland’s stars are still visible, it does feel a less promising situation than just a few months ago when you consider the national team will be playing in the Nations League in another couple of weeks.
We all know how important regular club football is in order to perform for a national team, and in Poland’s case the finest example would have been Kacper Urbański, breakout star of the Biało-Czerwoni’s Euro 2024 campaign and someone who featured regularly for Bologna last season. Urbański would not have developed in the same way or have become as central a figure to the national team’s hopes without that regular football, and the same can be said of the inverse with a player like Moder, who had such a huge injury lay-off that Selekcjoner Michał Probierz had trouble selecting him and finding the right balance when he was fit again. Eventually of course Moder proved to still possess the quality he had before his terrible injury issues, but it did take until Poland’s final match of the Euros to see that really pay off.
Moder has been credibly linked with moves away from Brighton from early on this summer, most notably with Leicester. However, nothing has come to pass and he was omitted from the squad for Brighton’s first Premier League game against Everton last weekend, although this is more likely fitness-related as according to Tomasz Włodarczyk he has been suffering with an injury since Poland’s Euro exit. There are scant further rumours about any potential move for Moder, and it may be that he remains where he is, although that would carry with it further diminished playing time of course.
When it comes to Kiwior, it does feel like despite playing well for Arsenal in stretches of last season he is still not really valued by Mikel Arteta, considering the Spaniard’s addiction to buying defenders. Supposedly Kiwior is free to leave if a suitable offer is presented to Arsenal, but despite a slew of links with clubs in Italy and Spain nothing concrete has materialised at time of writing.
Milik is another interesting case, especially when you consider that even in a second year at Juventus not as good as his first, he still showed flashes of quality and did of course finish as top scorer in the Coppa Italia, which Juve won. With new coach Thiago Motta at the helm it would appear Milik is surplus to requirements, although we’ll know more once he returns from injury.
Definitely surplus to requirements at Juventus was Szczęsny, now enjoying aforementioned free agent status and similarly having links with a return to England, remaining in Italy or even one story which indicated a few Spanish clubs are sniffing around for his services. As it is, Szczęsny is by no means old for a goalkeeper and would still have several years at the top level, and who knows whether he is or isn’t retiring from international duty given the mixed messages on the matter for the last few months since Poland’s Euro 2024 campaign finished. What concerns me is we’ve just seen a top goalkeeper like David De Gea languish in free agency for an entire season, and the natural worry is that something similar might happen with Szczęsny.
Then when you consider a move like Dawid Kownacki retuning to Düsseldorf, it all starts to feel a little bit like we’re returning to a time when Poland’s national team stars were only bit-part players for their clubs, save one or two exceptions. We’ve had to accept in the past few years that we’re at a tail-end of what should be considered something of a golden generation for Poland, but sadly beyond one Euros quarter-final and one World Cup knockout match which Poland were lucky to reach, it hasn’t amounted to a great deal of on-paper success.
Despite all of these complaints, there are bright signs ahead when we see a player like Jakub Kamiński fighting his way back into form with Wolfsburg, or the very likely scenario of Marcin Bułka continuing to be one of Ligue 1’s top goalkeepers, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
Yes, it is concerning with how easily tossed aside by top clubs some of Poland’s national team stars are, especially when you consider how well they have played in the very recent past. However, the truth probably lies somewhere in-between the point Szczęsny himself made about clubs seeing Polish players as “cheap labour” and then the fact that for many years he was indispensable for top clubs, not to mention the other truly world-class Polish stars like Robert Lewandowski and Piotr Zieliński continue to be. As is often the case, it is very much a grey area.
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