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Monday, February 17, 2025

This is what the Poles won with this promotion. The Iron Curtain has fallen! Pajor is the symbol of the Polish national team

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It was symbolic – in the 94th minute, Ewa Pajor scored the most important goal in the history of women's football in Poland, and after a while, when the referee finished the match, she burst into tears. She wasn't moved, but just burst into tears. She was drowning in her friends' arms and still couldn't regulate her breathing. She bit her shirt, clenched her fists and screamed. She gave the Polish national team what no other player before her had given. But there has never been such a great player in Poland in history. There were no such high hopes and such gigantic demands for any of them. In addition, she didn't have an easy year in the national team – she didn't score many goals, she even made mistakes in penalty kicks, and the tactics were still based on her. And she knew she had to do something more at a crucial moment. And she did everything that was needed – in the first match against Austria she assisted in a goal, and in the second match she scored a goal, helping Poland advance to the Euro.

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We said “I'm checking!”

No wonder my legs were shaking at times. The weight of those 90 minutes was downright overwhelming – either a historic success or a wasted historic opportunity; either the first big tournament for Poland or the next one in front of TV; either a beautiful punch line for the golden generation of Polish football players, or a patch for an unfulfilled generation; either immunity for Nina Patalon or a vote of no confidence. It is downright inhuman to reduce the last 44 months of the coach's work to a one and a half hour match, but this is how the qualifying rounds went and this is the situation created by the results of a dozen or so previous matches. To play for everything in Vienna, first they had to win the Nations League in Division B, then be relegated from Division A, losing all their matches to the Germans, Icelanders and Austrians, and finally eliminate the Romanians in the play-off semi-finals. It was a long road.

And its beginning should be sought even earlier – in 2021, when Zbigniew Boniek handed over the national team to Patalon and marked summer 2025 as the final goal of its work. She was supposed to rebuild the team and prepare it enough to get to the championship for the first time in history. This was a necessary condition for women's football in Poland to develop faster and not be so uphill. And then everything was subordinated to this – each subsequent match was supposed to lead to this goal in some way. Defeats were supposed to teach, and victories were supposed to encourage. The mistakes made were not to happen again and the successful actions were to be repeated. When it was not possible to organize this Euro, although the Polish Football Association – both Boniek and Kulesza – tried to do so, we consoled ourselves that at least we no longer had to worry about the motivation of the soccer players. We were worried when, in recent months, when playing against the Germans and Icelanders, they sometimes made kindergarten mistakes. And we gained hope when we saw the match in GdaÅ„sk against the Romanians. And finally on Tuesday we said “I'll check”.

The favorites of the two-legged play-off were the Austrians, who had already won two matches against the Poles this year – both 3-1, and had already tasted the Euro in the past. Much changed after the first match, which Poland won 1-0 in GdaÅ„sk on Friday. Suddenly we were unsatisfied because there was no shortage of opportunities to score more goals. But it all resulted from concern for the team: because it will be more difficult in Vienna, because the Austrians won't be able to surprise the Austrians with a brave approach again, because they will probably start right away, because this time they can be more effective, because the emotions and pressure will be even greater, and in In previous matches, Polish players had problems keeping their nerves under control, so it would be good to increase the margin of error by at least one more goal.

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And the more difficult it was, the sweeter Ewa Pajor's goal was at the end.

Like Vienna, it's a battle

Patalon talks about football brilliantly – he draws comparisons from history and finds analogies in everyday events. She once convinced me that in national football, the pitch is a mirror that reflects the characteristics of the entire nation. And so – we, Poles – taking part in uprisings, impatient every day, working hard, suffering for years, but still facing enemies, will not patiently play football, pass it endlessly, but we will certainly not give up, we will not give up. , we will not put our foot down, and when we see a chance to strike, we will move immediately. And since the key battle of her team took place in Vienna, historical comparisons suggested themselves. And it was indeed a battle. Not much beautiful action, but lots of fighting. Not much smiling in the game, but an hour and a half of clenched teeth. Blow for blow.

And the last one, the knockout one, belonged to Poland. It was asked by Pajor, whose entire career – from PÄ™gów with 70 inhabitants to the great Barcelona – is under the sign that everything is possible. Even what the Polish national team has failed to achieve over the last 43 years – since the first match in history against Italy.

For a long time it was a game of dozens of “whys”, “buts” and “ifs”. Why did Natalia Padilla-Bidas hit so lightly in the 7th minute, why did Ewa Pajor, in the 34th minute, prepare the ball for a shot, do everything that was most difficult, and then shoot badly. What would have happened if not for the great intervention of Kinga Szemik and Wiktoria Zieniewicz knocking the ball out from in front of the empty goal. What would happen if Klaudia JedliÅ„ska hit her head better right after entering the pitch? And “but” – Austria was pressing more and more, had the initiative for long periods, created opportunities, and at the end of the match the referee was waiting for a signal from VAR whether she should award a penalty kick against Poland. Nina Patalon's relief at the restart signal said it all.

The great importance of this promotion! For the “Golden Generation” and subsequent generations

And the more problems and doubts there were along the way, the sweeter the promotion was in the end. Its significance is enormous – both sporting and cultural. We already wrote about it after the first match against Austria – in women's football, the iron curtain dividing the continent into the West and the East has still not fallen. Traditions, successes and money are in the West. We have aspirations and a lot of catching up to do. Throughout history, only 19 countries have taken part in the European Championships, and the only representative of the East was Ukraine, which once managed to enter the ball for the elite – Western and Scandinavian countries. Now Poland will sneak into this ball. And in PZPN, they explain the importance of Euro graphically: instead of climbing rung by rung, they will overcome several of them at a time. It will be easier to attract the attention of sponsors, media and fans. And the Poles also won this promotion. The iron curtain has fallen! Let this be the beginning, not the end.



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