Roll on Polonia: Warsaw's tumultuous club getting back to full tilt

Words: Alex Webber

Images: Alex Webber

As a Bristol City fan, I’ve now reached that stage in life where I’ve heard the word ‘nil’ more times than I have my own name. Yet on that point, it’s not like I’m special – as football fans, the vast majority of us live in a suspended state of perpetual disappointment.

But even with that in mind, spare a thought for the followers of Polonia Warsaw, champions of the nation at the start of the millennium, financial catastrophe in 2013 saw the club relegated to the fifth step of Polish football.

Having turned out in European competition just three years previously, at a stroke Polonia found themselves mercilessly cast into the dungeon leagues of Poland.

Lesser clubs may have resigned themselves to death, and were it not for the intervention of a Frenchman that could well have been the fate of Polonia Warsaw.

With home crowds whittled down to just triple digits, Gregoire Nitot’s arrival three-years back could not have come sooner – to all intents and purposes, the club’s last hopes rested upon his shoulders.

©Alex Webber/ Terrace Edition. Polonia Warszawa.

Of course, there had been false dawns before, so when – in 2020 – he revealed a 10-year plan that envisaged top-flight football, it was a pledge that was met in the city with both smirks and suspicion.

That said, Nitot has proven a man of his word. First saving the club from bankruptcy, this act was followed last summer by a promotion clinched in spectacularly dramatic fashion.

Now in the third flight, the good times are back and the club finds itself closing in on a second consecutive title as the season reaches its business end.

You see, where once trips to Polonia were defined by an almost poetically bleak air of despondency, today the air crackles with hope and ambition. At last, the future is bright.

This could not have been said of the weather for this game. Contested under Warsaw’s murky, mucky skies, the pervasive dull drizzle nonetheless provided an atmospheric backdrop for a game played out to partisan support.

Buoyed by an optimistic sense of expectation, the team responded to the fans by carving out a hard-earned 1-0 win that catapulted the side to the top of the table.

The delirious scenes that greeted the final whistle had, however, been preceded by an equally raucous 90-minutes.

“We don’t have grenade launchers, only pyrotechnics,” read one banner in the crowd, a cheeky little dig at a locally-based police commander who had recently hit the news after firing off a bazooka in his office (yes, strange things happen in Poland).

Fittingly, this flag was soon itself engulfed in a thick fog of smoke as Polonia’s fans unleashed a barrage of pyro. To these celebratory scenes, the home team raided, poked and prodded, playing with the belief that flourishes when a team bonds with its support.

Not that the opposition should at all be dismissed. Visiting the capital for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century, Hutnik Krakow’s fans likewise contributed to what in Britain we’d describe as a cup-tie atmosphere.

Vociferously backed by a bumper following of 200, they too played a part with their own sea of smoke billowing from their pen.

Yet, even without these lusty thrills, Polonia is a place that I always enjoy – in this, credit must be given not just to their closely-knit support base, but also a richly-storied stadium that is steeped in tradition.

With so many of Poland’s football stadiums appearing as little more than flavourless plastic boxes, this glorious antique has the look and character of a grand old dame. Being here, never are you far from history, a point spotlighted by the plaques that pay tribute to the insurgents that died here during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

And then there is the small matter of what I rate to be the finest sports bar in the whole of the nation. Festooned with scarves, trophies and trinkets, it’s in this cramped and sweaty space that visitors will discover the essence of Polonia – before taking your seat in the creaky, shadowy stand, a pint here is a mandatory affair.

Necessitated by their own need to modernise and advance to the next level, much of this stands to change with plans afoot for a thorough upgrade and renovation.

In the meantime though, those fortunate enough to visit Polonia can discover a nostalgic paradise that harks to football’s truest days – a club like no other, its irresistible faded charms stand in contrast to the vaulting aspirations of the owner and fans.

Offering up a heady sense of the past, present and future, to visit now is to visit at an extraordinary point of this club’s varied story.