Euro 2012

It Was the shortest football war of modern Europe. After a week’s clash with PZPN polish government capitulated.

The removal of the probation officer from the PZPN and instead of this a supervision of a special commission on election in the association, which in addition to this is going to bind itself to eliminate all the offences discovered by the ministerial control – that is the price which both sides had to pay not to let the ultimatum set by FIFA come into force. On wednesday, two days after the probation officer had been inducted to the PZPN the International Federation of Association Football threatened that it will suspend Polish football representation in selection matches for mundial. That would effect in canceling the matches with the Czech Republic and Slovakia planned fot 11th and 15th of October.

There’s no doubt that the government concession is grater. Even on friday the prime minister Donald Tusk unequivocally rejected any compliance towards PZPN and FIFA, “it’s been enough of this mess. If minister Drzewiecki will persist in firmness, he has my support.“ the prime minister stated. But later on he blocked the talks with the association. Still, on sunday other sections of government and Platforma Obywatelska, the deputy prime minister Grzegorz Schetyna and Zbigniew Chlebowski, seemed to speak one voice with the prime minister. What was it that yesterday morning scared all of them? “It has finally reached the government that the threat from the UEFA with FIFA support is quite a good reason to deprive poland of the organization of Euro 2012,” says PZPN’s activist.

FIFA or PZPN lay considerably less that the government itself. The commission which has to introduce the establishment into polish football is the same legislature which has been working for the last one and a half year. Throughout this time it didn’t even put through the election congress despite the fact that it promised to do this in a few month’s time. The commission brought up to existence by the previous government in january 2007, after the introduction of the probation officer, led to – just as now – removal of the probation officer. After that the commission actually suspended it’s activity. It was in it’s formal guardianship the association had committed all the offences that made the minister introduce the probation officer once again. So where did the belief, that this time it’s going to be better, came from?

The representative of the president of Republic Of Poland prof. Michał Kleiber, Adam Giersz from the ministry of sport, Jerome Champagne from FIFA and Richard Taylor from UEFA enter into composition of the commission. The works are to be started today, but considering professor’s Kleiber stay in Japan the commission is going to meet tomorrow.

Minister Drzewiecki tried yesterday to take advantage of this fact in his last act of despair. “The probation officer is not going to be withdrawned before the commission ends it’s work. There’s no way to make it happen on Tuesday, as FIFA wants it to be. At the earliest it can be friday.”

The international football’s government will let him do this for sure, so that he could have his satisfaction. He didn’t reveal his idea as to the reform of PZPN and generally to the repair of polish football, apart from introducing the probation officer, until the end. Despite many request from the polish his thirty six pages report from the control in the association has probably never got to the world’s and european’s government. Probably it will probably never get there. Nobody in the seats of both organizations will read that on the 24th of April 2007 the PZPN’s activists in a sudden course made the decision considering the location of the final Polish Cup match. This, according to the ministry, is a huge crime.

“We are very satisfied,” caught by television cameras in Brussels, diplomatically and with a wide grin, FIFA’s president Joseph Blatter recapitulated ending the football war.

The dismissing of the probation officer is just a formality. An appropriate application from the minister to the arbitration tribunal at PKOL will be enough. It can be done in within few hours.

It’s probably easy to guess who is the real author of the agreement. Of course Michał Listkiewicz. The director is not in Poland now, but it was him and his Ukrainian counterpart Hryhorijem Surkisem who at first arranged an elaborate plan, and then they carried it out point by point. For the whole weekend they had phone contact with the top brass of the Polish government and the international football. “One more time it turned out, that director Listkiewicz is irreplaceable,” says a lawyer connected with the PZPN Jacek Kryszczuk.

The ones that were placed on the altar of the agreement are embittered. “Position occupied by the FIFA is humiliating,” says the new boss of the legal department, appointed by the probation officer Robert Zawłocki, Michał Tomczak, “once again it turned out that FIFA persecutes countries in which the democracy is being born, and football associations are still in the totalitarian system. They aren’t listening to our arguments at all, they don’t want to know our problems. The Polish government should get down to building a new PZPN as soon as possible.”