Desperate Poland search for a star
After seeing Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski get snapped up by the
likes of Germany, Poland’s football association (PZPN) is now scouting
the globe’s vast Polish diaspora for talent.
Polish fans and the PZPN alike dream of reviving a long-lost golden
age, with their sights set on glory on home turf at Euro 2012, after
failing to make it to the 2010 World Cup.
Getting budding internationals to opt for Poland is part of the
strategy.
“The goal is to never again to have cases like Podolski or Klose,”
said Maciej Chorazyk, 35, the PZPN’s diaspora pointman.
The duo were born in Poland and emigrated to Germany as youngsters.
Called up by Germany, they turned Poles into nervous wrecks during the
2006 World Cup and Euro 2008, when twists of fate drew Germany and
Poland together.
Klose, now 31, was never tempted by Poland, but 24-year-old Podolski
is a classic one-that-got-away. At 18 he contacted the PZPN. He got the
brush-off, he has said just like Polish-born Germany team-mate Piotr
Trochowski.
“We don’t want players like that to be scoring against us,” said
Chorazyk.
An ardent supporter since he was six, with degrees in sociology and
journalism, but no grounding in the sport business, Chorazyk created a
scouting unit two years ago with nothing but a nod from the PZPN.
“It was an accident. One day I met a member of the PZPN and offered
to scout for players with Polish roots. He said yes,” he said.
Chorazyk worked for free for the first year. He has a crew of
volunteers in Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia,
as well as further afield in Brazil, Argentina, Canada and the United
States.
“We live in an age of globalisation, and we need to open up to the
outside world,” said former Poland manager Jerzy Engel. “We should be
above all be opening up to our diaspora”.
Football’s world governing body, FIFA, allows teams to call up
players with family ties to the country. Ireland, another nation with a
vast diaspora, has done so for decades.
According to the diaspora organisation Wspolnota Polska there are
around 17 million people outside Poland with Polish citizenship or
recent ancestry. The home population is 38 million.
The diaspora results from a tortured history of invasion, four
decades of post-World War II communist rule, and over a century of
economic migration.
Despite the potentially vast numbers, Chorazyk drew up a 500-name
shopping list and even honed that to about 40, including juniors. Half
of his picks have already turned out for Poland sides.
For the past two years, he has organised training camps in Germany
for Polish-origin players in German clubs. It’s still early days, he
noted. “We’re way behind the Turks, who have three permanent offices in
Germany with full-time paid staff.” Chorazyk has already steered one
relatively big name into the Polish senior side: 25-year-old midfielder
Ludovic Obraniak of French first division club Lille.
Obraniak, a second-generation Frenchman, scored both goals in his
inaugural Poland match, a 2-0 friendly against Greece in August. He is
learning Polish, and gave an emotional rendition of the national anthem.
“We don’t promise them anything. Playing for the national side is an
honour and that’s how we present it to them,” said Chorazyk.
Engel underlined an extra, non-sporting motive: “It’s about
preserving a sense of Polishness amongst thousands of youngsters
abroad”.
After Obraniak, Poland have three more defenders in their sights:
Frenchmen Damien Perquis, 25, of Sochaux, and Laurent Koscielny, 24, of
Lorient, and Polish-born German Sebastian Boenisch, 22, of Werder
Bremen.
WARSAW, AFP
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