So the fun begins. Polonia's Warsaw mad owner (Józef Wojciechowski - JW for friends, he owns a company called JW Construction although some call it Deconstruction) sold club's licence to GKS Katowice. So Polonia won't be in ekstraklasa (top league) this season, there are two options now:
a) bottom tier - B-klasa meaning 7th league level
b) 4th division if they gather couple of zloty pronto.
Obviously media people are crying their tears as Polonia is the less obvious choice than Legia, a club for artists, journalists etc but they should be crying 4 years ago when Polonia bought a licence from Groclin Grodzisk to be promoted to ekstraklasa. What goes around comes around.
JW is (or rather was) the polish Jesus Gil y Gil, firing managers during matches. There is a story he was once on his yacht and his assistant was asked to put some whiskey for him, when he mixed with cola JW said - what have you done? you're fired for ruing such fine whiskey. Close to end of last season he employed another manager and asked how much would he and his staff like to earn during 3 remaining months of the season. They told him what would it be in total so he paid it at once and multiplied the whole amount by three. Etc etc. Various stories do the circulation nowadays....
He was also strongly linked with taking over my club Lechia Gdansk, as we have decent crowds (over 20k compared to Polonia's 3k), brand new ground and polish PM is a fan not to be underestimated etc the reason for that was he apparently studied in Gdansk, but what he studied was exchange rates near the train station. It was illegal to deal foreign currency under communism and the official rate was lauhgable so there were people doing it illegally. JW was one of them, he obviously had ties with security forces cause without he'd be arrested in 5 minutes. So in the mid 80s he disappeared for the US to come back as a rich man and after buying various land plots in and around Warsaw he became even richer as he built houses there...
So GKS Katowice who played in Europe for 10 years in a row from late 80s on take their place, but their fans already said won't follow it as they say it was a promotion in a sporting way. So the club will die but it's not know yet how soon....
Here in Gdansk there is a talk about russian guy Zingarevitch (the one who already owns Reading) buying Lechia. That's what Sash08 told me in a message couple of hours ago (hope he won't mind me putting it here): The guy talks a good game but not sure of the substance behind him, never mind the pile of dead bodies behind his daddy.
So interesting times indeed, jut not in a way everyone hoped for after the Euros. There was a football boom predicted not a merry-go-round-who-wants-or-buy-or-sell-a-football-club-at-a-very-reasonable-price...
