The problem with football in Poland is that when Canal+ bought the TV rights to Polish League in 1995 and the games could only be watch in paid, coded television that many Polish families couldn't afford (especially the poor ones, from which 99% of football players come) they were deprived of watching league games and gradually lost interest in domestic football and their children started watching and following other sports - mostly volleyball, speedway and handball. Hundreds of thousands of kids took up these sports and were lost for football.
And now we have an entire generation of young players and supporters who grew without mass access to domestic football and you can see where the attention has shifted:
- in Volleyball Poland was the World vice-champions in 2006 and we are the current European Champions, we have one of the strongest leagues in the world, our NT plays regularly in the World League and our clubs in the Champions League;
- in Handball we won the World Championship silver medal in 2007 and bronze medal in 2009 (in 2007 we also won the handball Supercup played between Olimpic, WC and EC medalists);
- in Speedway we have the strongest league in the World which attracts more supporters to the stadiums than football games and we are the current World Champions;
These three sports are way ahead of football and if nothing is done to improve the level of football in our country, by attracting more people to it (by showing league games in national TV, investing in youth development and infrastructure and attracting more sponsors) we will remain at the bottom of European football forever.
RevokeNice: Footballing giants like Gabon, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Lithuania, Burkina Faso, Scotland, Mali, Peru and many more are all ahead of Poland on the FIFA rankings.
FIFA ranking is ridiculous - I'd say that the UEFA ranking shows the situation in a more accurate way.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method4/crank2010.html
RevokeNice: Its not looking too good for the European Championship in two years time.
It's looking terribly bad at the moment :(
|