When Lech Poznań knocked Austria Wien out of the UEFA Cup, he received a phone call in the dressing room informing him that the president was calling. – I thought it was the mayor of the city and was surprised that he was calling instead of coming to the dressing room. But the guy told me that his name is Lech Kaczyński and that he is the president of Poland. I see that someone is trying to make a fool of me, so I tell the guy in words that every man understands and that I can translate into a gentle “stop joking around”. And he replied: However, I congratulate you sincerely on behalf of the Polish nation. It turned out that it was indeed Lech Kaczyński. I knew that I would apologize to him at the next opportunity, but I didn’t have time.
He built up his position over a long period of time, and the path he followed was only at the beginning quite typical of a young man with so much talent. When asked how many clubs he played for and how many he coached, he had difficulty answering. He hardly played at some places and limited his presence to a few training sessions. However, it turned out that he played for thirteen clubs in Poland, the United States and Germany. He probably coached twenty.
How did Franciszek Smuda start his coaching career?
He changed clubs, hoping that perhaps the next one would be a better fit for him. He spent the 1960s at Unia Racibórz, Odra Wodzisław, Ruch Chorzów, Stal Mielec and Piast Gliwice. At Mielec he knew the bench better than the pitch, where speed records were set on the wing by 20-year-old Grzegorz Lato, who was just starting his great career.
Franciszek Smuda was two years older and decided that since his life was normal in Poland, perhaps America would be happier. Many lower-class football players officially left to work in the USA. They earned money on construction sites, in slaughterhouses and bakeries, and earned extra money by playing football. Some of them fulfilled their sporting dreams only there.
Smuda had a different fate. In 1975, he played for the Hartford Bi-Centennials club, which the Polish national team faced during a tour of North America. His coach was Kazimierz Górski and his assistant was Andrzej Strejlau, who had just become Legia’s first coach. He believed that someone like Franciszek Smuda, tall, elegant and little known in Poland, would solve the coach’s problem of filling the Legia central defender position.
