Hello, and welcome to the first ever post on Ekstraklasa Exports. I’m Bruce, founder and sole employee, and for today’s post I thought I’d explain why I’ve started this blog, as well as some opinions on the big stories that have been developing around Polish football so far this summer.
I’m starting this website due to my passion for Polish football, which has been a more recent development in my life, but once I started watching the Ekstraklasa I realised what a competitive and entertaining league it is and the talent it produces. I also started keeping track of Polish players around Europe, as well as the Polish national team, and thought there might be a way to utilise my freshly learned skills as a just-graduated journalist into my passion.
Enough about that though, because you’re here for the football. I thought a good way to start would be breaking down the topics into a league by league sort of thing for this initial discussion, combining my thoughts on transfers and a look ahead to how I think the 2022/23 season might pan out.
Ekstraklasa
In my opinion the biggest story for the Ekstraklasa this summer has to be the freshly-relegated Wisła Kraków, and how well they’ll be able to keep hold of young prospects. Of course, this is a struggle for all Polish clubs; we already know we’ll be seeing Kacper Kozłowski in the Premier League this coming season and Jakub Kamiński officially became a Wolfsburg player on Friday.
Back to Kraków, and I imagine they will struggle to keep hold of Piotr Starzyński. The young winger was a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing season, and despite him signing a new deal in January, I can’t see him staying in the I Liga for much longer. I’ve singled out Starzyński, but really I could say the same for any of the young talents at Wisła.
Funnily enough, this leads me nicely onto the next point worth making, Lech Poznań securing the loan signing of Georgian-Ukrainian winger Giorgi Tsitaishvili from Dynamo Kyiv, who spent time on loan this past season at Wisła Kraków. Having gone in for Tsitaishvili, you would assume he will be a direct replacement for Kamiński on the wing. It’ll be interesting to see how Lech get on in the Champions League qualifiers, starting tomorrow night against Qarabag.
Perhaps the only team at the top of the Ekstraklasa not to have any talents poached would be Raków Częstochowa. Their progress over the last few seasons has been rapid but steady, and they have been Puchar Polski champions two years on the bounce. Their Conference League performance last season was respectable as well. Early days, but if they can keep the current side together over the summer, they may well be league champions.
Premier League
There are at least two Polish arrivals confirmed for the Premier League this summer, and both on the South Coast. The aforementioned Kacper Kozłowski will be joining countryman Jakub Moder at Brighton (when Moder recovers from his ACL injury, likely in the new year), and Mateusz Lis joins Southampton.
Kozłowski is undoubtedly a huge talent, one seen as Poland’s next big hope after Lewandowski retires. Whether he will be given the game time at Brighton remains to be seen however. Having been loaned out to Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium for the second half of last season, he was mostly used as an impact sub, and I can see the same thing happening under Graham Potter this year. Time is on Kozłowski’s side, and I can see his potential time on the pitch increasing as the season wears on.
Lis will most likely be a back-up at Southampton, perhaps even third-choice behind Gavin Bazunu and Alex McCarthy. In any case, I’m sure Jan Bednarek will be happy he now has a Polish teammate. I see this transfer as a bit like when Liverpool bought Sebastian Coates to keep Luis Suarez from feeling homesick. One for the away trip room-shares, if you will.
One existing Premier League player to keep an eye on will be Matty Cash. He’s about as Polish as my cat is (born just outside London, but has a Polish mum). However, he has played exceptionally well this past year for both Aston Villa and the Polish national team, including a stunning strike in the Nations League against Holland. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest that if he keeps his form up that he will be an integral part of the squad for the World Cup this winter.
Serie A
Serie A is a pretty common destination for Ekstraklasa players to move to. We’ve seen in the past six months a fairly hit-and-miss loan for Mateusz Praselik at Hellas Verona and the always impressive Piotr Zieliński being a key part of the Napoli title charge. Zieliński has regularly been linked with a move away from Napoli, but given he is an Italian citizen a Premier League move has always been unlikely in my opinon. He himself came out after the last Nations League game to deny he would be moving away from Napoli, and it would be unwise to place any bets on him straying from the Neapolitan coastline.
The player I was really rooting for in Serie A this past season was loanee Krzysztof Piątek. The job of replacing Vlahovic at Fiorentina was shared between him and Arthur Cabral, and while Cabral is an up-and-coming striker, I was hoping to see Piątek rediscover his form of old. Whilst he showed flashes of his past brilliance, and general decent play in most games he featured in, it would be fair to say he perhaps wasn’t quite scoring at the required rate. In any case, it looks like Fiorentina have been priced out of a permanent move for Piątek this summer and he will be staying in the Bundesliga, with the relegation-escaping Hertha Berlin.
Bundesliga/La Liga
I’ve grouped these two leagues together as arguably the biggest transfer story of the summer centres on the possibility of Robert Lewandowski’s transfer to Barcelona. This will be a loss for Bayern, obviously, who seem to be sticking their heads in the sand and insisting Lewandowski will still be at the Allianz Arena for the coming season. In the often symbiotic nature that is football’s transfer market, it is yet to be seen who Barcelona will be selling in order to afford Lewandowski. Frenkie De Jong is the most obvious candidate, but even if he is sold, Barcelona will be having to pay their debts before making an offer for Lewandowski.
Again, I’m saying nothing new here, and the amount of words written about this transfer saga are in the millions. Keeping it simple, here is my opinion: La Liga are frustrated that Mbappe has rejected them as a league, and despite Javier Tebas’ negativity towards Real and Barca, he might well intervene to make this transfer smoother for Barcelona’s accountants. For clarification, I am not for one moment suggesting anything untoward here on the part of Tebas, just that La Liga needs a quality player to sell around the world from a branding perspective. They already have a number of these, but the prospect of Lewandowski vs Benzema in the Clasico might seem an incentive for La Liga as a brand.
Ligue 1
There’s one big story regarding Polish players in Ligue 1, and that is the recent transfer of Adam Buksa to RC Lens for a supposed club record fee of approximately €10 million. Buksa joins as one of the leading strikers in the MLS, which is a much greater achievement than some may view it as in Europe. He will be joining compatriot Przemysław Frankowski, who Lens also signed from the MLS in January. Frankowski was converted to a left wing-back, as opposed to his natural right wing role, and was impressive for Lens as they had a strong season in Ligue 1. Lens have actually added further to their Polish ranks over the weekend with the signing of midfielder Łukasz Poręba from Zagłębie Lubin. It is expected that Lens will be losing some of their players this summer, but if the new signings enable Lens to continue their rate of growth they will be in and around the European spots. Buksa will probably be adding some goals to an already dynamic attack, so they might well surprise some more established names in France.
Well, that’s everything for this first post. Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and perhaps learned one or two things. Feel free to follow the Twitter @ekstraklasaexp, where I am most active.
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