Donald Tusk, current head of the liberal Civic Platform (PO) party, has never hidden his passion for football. He even played, but always as an amateur. As a politician, in recent weeks, as informal leader of the opposition, he has tried to combat his political opponents, both in election rallies and on social media. There will be parliamentary elections in Poland in mid-October, which Tusk’s party has not won since 2015. Since then, the PO has also lost in presidential and local elections. Perhaps for this reason Tusk’s language is becoming increasingly bitter and aggressive. In one of the tweets published last week, the politician, who wrote about the governance of the coalition of conservative United Right parties, led by Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (PiS), said that he feels like… throwing up. The leader of Poland’s opposition has regularly accused the government of ‘destroying Poland’ and posted another unusual tweet on Wednesday, comparing the Polish Deputy Prime Minister to… Fernando Santos. “What Santos did to the Polish team is similar to what Kaczyski is doing to the Polish state. We said goodbye to them with relief,” wrote Donald Tusk on the social network X (formerly Twitter) shortly before the Portuguese coach was fired by the Polish Federation. Tusk’s wish came true with the selector, but in Kaczyski’s case this is unlikely to happen as the United Right continues to lead pre-election elections.

Five years, six coaches

Reading the comments about the dismissal of Fernando Santos as coach of Poland, where he worked for only 232 days, suggests that the majority of football fans in Poland believe that the Eagles themselves are the main culprit for the Eagles’ current lack of results . football federation, which does not ensure stability in technical control. Just look at the statistics: the Portuguese’s successor will be the sixth selector in just five years. Despite the poor performance of the Santos team, which lost three out of five matches with its team in the Euro 2024 qualifiers and fell to the penultimate place in the group, the comments of experts and fan polls organized by the media show that the Portuguese coach not the main culprit of the crisis in the Polish national team. In a reader consultation organized by the online diary Wpolityce.plOnly 7% saw Fernando Santos as the main culprit for the failure of the team, which is in fourth place in Group E, behind Albania, the Czech Republic and Moldova. Although Poland still has a chance of qualifying for the European Championship, even after Sunday’s 0-2 defeat against Albania in Tirana, fewer and fewer fans believe in the team and especially in FC Barcelona leader Robert Lewandowski. forward.

Lewandowski: my mistake

The dismissal of Fernando Santos displeased not only many fans in Poland, but also a number of important figures in Polish football. In defense of the Portuguese came Henryk Kasperczak, former 1974 World Cup winner and coach of several clubs in the French first division and national teams, such as Morocco and Senegal. Santos’ continuation was also supported by Antoni Piechniczek, former senator from Donald Tusk’s PO party. The former coach, with whom Poland finished third at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, defended the need for the Portuguese to continue as coach for more than a few months at a time. Both emphasized that Poland today “doesn’t have a team first and foremost.” Piechniczek, whose team defeated Portugal in the group stage of the 1986 World Cup, also criticized the attitude of the team captain, whom he accused after the World Cup in Qatar of forcing the association to fire national coaches. “You have already fired two selectors. Remember that you are just a footballer,” Piechniczek warned Lewandowski on RMF FM radio in December. A few days earlier, news came from Qatar about a conflict in the Polish national team between the football players and the coach. The federation quickly fired Czesław Michniewicz, who eventually joined Abha Club in the Saudi first division. However, the Polish coach did not even hear a thank you from the captain, Robert Lewandowski. Since the World Cup, he continues to be criticized and blamed for the poor performance of the national team. And you know it. On Sunday, Lewandowski took the blame for the defeat to Albania and admitted that he and his colleagues need to seriously change the team’s play. When a journalist asked him about a possible dismissal of Fernando Santos from the Polish command, he replied: “That is not my role.”