Polonia Warsaw (, ), founded on 19 November 1911, is the oldest existing sports club in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, best known for its football and basketball teams. It also has track and field, swimming, chess, mountain biking, and contract bridge sections. Historically it also had sections in ice hockey, fencing, tennis, volleyball, hazena, cycling and boxing.
The football team competes in the I liga, the second level of the Polish football league system.
History 20th century Beginnings
Polonia Warsaw was formed in the autumn of 1911 as a union of several gimnazjum school teams (including "Stella" and "Merkury"). Alongside co-founders Wacław Gebethner, Stefan Pronaszko, and Tadeusz Gebethner, Wacław "Denhoff" Czarnocki was the co-founder of the club who also came up with its name. "Polonia" is Latin for "Poland" and is often used by Polish migrants in reference to the diaspora communities of Poles living abroad in other countries. The choice of such a name was a brave decision in the early 20th century, since Poland was not an independent country at this time, and Warsaw was part of the Russian partition; Poles living there were often subjected to repression and cultural imperialism from the Russian authorities ruling the Vistula Land. Due to this, Polonia could not be registered officially until political changes brought about by the advance of German troops into Russian-controlled lands in the First World War.
Initially, the players played in black-and-white striped shirts, but in the spring of 1912 they switched to their now traditional design of all black shirts. This was credited to Janusz Mück, longtime player of the team, who bought the new tops. The explanation for this patriotic colour scheme was that it was a sign of mourning for the occupied and divided Poland. This devotion to tradition resulted in the club's popular name: Czarne koszule ("The Black Shirts"). The uniform's white shorts and red socks come from the colours of the Polish flag.
The club's first match on 19 November 1911 was against a strong local rival, Korona, and ended 3:4 in favour of Korona. Two years later, in February 1913, the Black Shirts defeated Korona 4:0. During World War I, German occupiers were slightly more liberal in their ways than their previous Russian counterparts, and allowed the official registration of sports clubs on Polish territory. Thus on 15 October 1915 Polonia officially became a football club, despite already existing illegally for four years prior to this event.
The first match between Polonia and its younger rival Legia Warsaw (formed in 1916) was played on 29 April 1917, ending in a 1:1 draw. It was the first historic "Great Derby of Warsaw" – the clash of these two rival teams from the Polish capital. A month later, there was a second match between the teams, ending with the same score. Hatred divided their supporters early in the clubs' history and continues to this day, driving strong emotions during the matches and sometimes even violence between matches.
Interwar period
In 1921, the Black Shirts came second in the first-ever season of the Polish football championship. In 1926, they also finished the season as joint-champions. Polonia was Warsaw's favourite club at the time – the great majority of the city's inhabitants were devoted Black Shirt supporters. In the late 1930s, Polonia became one of the powerhouses of Polish football, with players such as: Jerzy Bulanow, Władysław Szczepaniak, Erwin Nyc, and Henryk Jaźnicki capping for the national team. The friendship between Polonia and KS Cracovia – the prewar Polish football legend (formed in 1906) and the first ever champions of Poland (1921) – dates back to these days, when both teams readily accepted players from foreign nationalities and religious backgrounds in what was a highly politicised time for Polish football.
KSP achieved many successes during the two decades between the world wars, establishing itself as a club with sections in: hockey, athletics, football, fencing, tennis, volleyball, basketball, swimming, hazena, cycling, and boxing. Although the first match between the two teams occurred earlier in 1917, the official beginning of the Varsovian derby is dated to 10 June 1921, when the Black Shirts beat Legia Warszawa 8:0. The rivalry between these two clubs continued to grow in the interwar period, during which they played against each other a total of 27 matches; Polonia secured 14 victories, Legia won 8 times, whereas 5 games ended in a draw. Construction of Polonia's own stadium began in 1925 and ended in 1928. Ten years later, the Union of Polish Sports Associations proclaimed Klub Sportowy Polonia Warszawa the best Polish sports club of 1938.
World War II
After the Second World War began, Poland was divided between the occupying forces of the Third Reich and the USSR. Warsaw ended up in the Nazi German occupied zone known as the General Government. Under the policies of Generalplan Ost and Lebensraum, Slavs were to become a race of slaves and eventually exterminated. Authorities of the German occupying forces thus forbid Poles from practicing sports; despite this, KSP continued to play illegally, taking part in various underground initiatives and winning the secret Varsovian Championship in 1942 and 1943.
Many of Polonia's players were involved in the resistance movement against the Nazis; some perished in concentration or death camps, some were executed, while others managed to survive the war. A prominent example is that of Tadeusz Gebethner, one of the club's founders as well as its first president and captain. An experienced soldier, he joined the Union of Armed Struggle (precursor of the Armia Krajowa) in 1940. Starting from 1942, Gebethner provided shelter to a family of Jews in his own home while risking his life as a member of the Home Army. He would go on to take part in the Warsaw Uprising, during which he was wounded twice. After the fall of the uprising he was transferred by the German forces to the Stalag XI-A POW camp, where he perished from sustained wounds on 14 October 1944. Tadeusz Gebethner was posthumously recognised as Righteous Among the Nations in 1981.
Pre-war footballers of Polonia, Adam Kogut and Julian Niemczycki, and athletes Wincenty Fryszczyn and Wacław Znajdowski, were among Poles murdered by the Russians in the large Katyn massacre in April–May 1940.
The Kazimierz Sosnkowski Stadium sustained major damage during the war, particularly during the Warsaw Uprising – since Polish insurgents used it as a battlefield against Nazi forces – and the systematic destruction of Warsaw that followed. It was finally rebuilt by the 1950s. Murals dedicated to the Polish partisans who fought against the German invaders have been painted along the walls of the stadium by the club's supporters in remembrance of these events.
The first Championship, the first Polish Cup, and relegation
In 1946, Polonia finally won the Polish Championship title. It was symbolic among the ruins of the bombed and burned capital. The final match was played on "Wojska Polskiego" Stadium (the Polish Army's – Legia's – ground) on Łazienkowska Street, because Polonia's stadium on 6 Konwiktorska Street (which lay close to the Jewish ghetto area) had been ruined during the war. The Black Shirts defeated AKS Chorzów in the final.
During the Stalinist period, Polonia's name and colours were changed; every Polish football club received a national sponsor, such as the army, militsiya, mining industry, etc. – Warsaw's oldest club was renamed Kolejarz ("Railroad worker"), as the team was now tied to the Polish State Railways. At the time, the railroad was one of the poorest sponsors, even choosing another club, Lech Poznań, as the main club they were investing in. Polonia's management also struggled to face the problems that the club came across, which contributed to its eventual relegation to the Polish second division. The traditional black shirts of the team's kit were banned, as the Stalinist regime was trying to erase everything which was associated with Warsaw from before the war. In 1952, Polonia Warsaw won their first Polish Cup. In the final, Polonia managed to outscore local rivals Legia Warsaw 1:0, much to the delight of Warsaw's fans, who would still continue to mainly support KSP until the 1960s. Several years after Stalin's death, the thaw in the politics of the Eastern Bloc allowed KSP to return to its original name of Polonia Warszawa in 1956.
Years later, there were still thousands of fans on Konwiktorska Street as nobody thought it would take 40 years for Polonia to come back to top-flight football, but Legia was becoming more popular and achieving greater successes. One of the reasons behind this was that all the young men, promising footballers to be from all over Poland, and especially the Warsaw youth academies, were called up for compulsory army training, which in the PRL lasted about 5 years or sometimes even longer. Many of the players received an offer to play for the army-sponsored Legia Warsaw, which led to some of the biggest successes of Polonia's bitter rivals in the 1960s. To this day, many of KSP's fans attribute Legia's current popularity in Warsaw to the backing that the Legioniści received in the PRL regime as well as Legia's "stealing" of talented players.
Back to the top flight In the 1992–1993 season, after 40 years of playing in the lower leagues, Polonia Warsaw was finally promoted to the first division again. However, the organisation of the club was insufficient to compete with the strongest clubs in Polish football – the biggest problems being a lack of money and no sound training base. After one season, the team was relegated yet again, but only for a year as in the 1995–1996 season Polonia Warszawa won promotion again. In 1996, Janusz Romanowski took over as chairman of Polonia, having just backed out from sponsoring local rivals Legia Warszawa, and brought the Poloniści back to Ekstraklasa. In 1998, the Czarne koszule finished runner-up in the top flight and in 1999 reached the semi-finals of the Intertoto Cup. Earlier in 1993, the club had also participated in the Bangladesh President's Gold Cup in Dhaka, in which they reached the final, but ultimately lost 1:0 to FC Petrolul Ploiești from Romania.
21st century The second Championship, the second Polish Cup, and another relegation In the 1999–2000 season, Polonia were not considered challengers for the title. And yet by the end of the autumn round, the Black Shirts were leading the entire league. That team had two managers – Jerzy Engel (who later became the coach of the Poland national team, which qualified for the 2002 World Cup) and Dariusz Wdowczyk (former Polish international player). During the winter break, Polonia signed two talented players in Tomasz Wieszczycki and Tomasz Kiełbowicz. Financially, KSP benefited by securing a sponsorship from the Hoop Cola soft drinks producer that was popular in Poland at the time. In the spring round, the Black Shirts lost only two games and drew one.
KSP won the Polish Championship in 2000 after triumphing over Legia Warsaw at their rivals' stadium with a score of 3:0. Prior to that, the team also won a League Cup yet again beating Legia Warszawa away 2:1. In July, they confirmed their place as the best that year, by winning the Super Cup in a match against Polish Cup winners Amica Wronki by a score of 4:2. These were also the times of Emmanuel Olisadebe, a Nigerian footballer who migrated to Poland and eventually became a Polish football legend after acquiring citizenship and playing for the national team in 2000–2004 (thus becoming the first black player on the Poland national team); Olisadebe initially began his career in Poland with Polonia Warszawa in 1997 and remained there until 2001.