Welcome back. It's really great to have you sitting
in with us today. Absolutely. So glad you could
join us. If you have ever found yourself staring
at just a massive, seemingly endless Wikipedia
table full of names and dates and statistics,
and you thought, there has to be a story hidden
in all this data, well, you are in exactly the
right place. Yeah, those tables can be a lot
to take in at first glance. They really can.
Today, our deep dive is venturing into a truly
data -rich piece of history. We're looking at
the sources detailing the Picanunu magazine plebiscite.
And for those who might not speak Polish, Picanuna
translates quite literally to football. Right.
Two words, foot and ball. And also, just to clarify
right off the bat, when we say plebiscite in
this specific context, we aren't talking about
some high -stakes political referendum. No, no,
not at all. It simply means a... I mean, it really
is a mountain of information when you first open
the source. We're looking at decades of annual
awards, multiple categories, hundreds of specific
player and club names. It's intense. It is. To
the untrained eye, it can just look like a dry
ledger of sporting trivia. But if you know how
to read it and if you take the time to understand
the context behind all those columns and rows.
It transforms into something else entirely. It
really does. It becomes a 50 -year time capsule.
Okay, let's unpack this by defining our mission
for today. We are going to cut through that overwhelming
wall of data to extract the real narrative here.
Because there is a huge narrative. Exactly. Because
this isn't just a list of who is good at kicking
a ball in any given year. It chronicles a nation's
sporting evolution. That's the perfect way to
put it. We are going to map out the rise of local
hometown heroes in the 1970s, trace the massive
shift toward the global superstardom we see today,
and really just watch the modernization of the
sport itself unfold year by year. It is a perfect
reflection of how a country's relationship with
its favorite sport evolves over half a century.
You can literally trace the economic and cultural
shifts of European football just by looking at
who wins these awards. And crucially, what clubs
they're playing for when they win them. Yes,
that club column is everything. But to understand
the true weight of the Pika Nuno plebiscite,
we really have to look at the landscape before
1973. Right. So what did that landscape actually
look like? Were there just no awards at all before
this magazine stepped in? There were awards,
but they were somewhat sporadic. Prior to 1973,
Polish football honors were primarily run by
a Katowice -based weekly newspaper called Sport.
OK, so a different publication. Exactly. They
held polls, but they lacked a certain definitive
annual consistency. There was actually a gap
in 1980, for instance, where no award was given
at all. Oh, wow. So just a blank year in the
records. Right. And that lack of a unified, undeniable
record, it kind of left a vacuum. That is when
the journalists at the Polish Football Weekly,
Pika Nuna, stepped in to organize their own plebiscite.
Which changed everything. It did. That initiative
finally brought a strict annual consistency.
And, consequently, a massive level of prestige
to the process of honoring the country's best
talent. Looking at that inaugural class of winners
in 1973 really grounds you in the history of
the sport. It sets the baseline. It does. The
very first Player of the Year award went to Kazimir
Zdena. He was a legendary midfielder playing
for Legia Warsaw at the time. Just a true icon
of the era. An absolute legend. And the first
ever Newcomer of the Year went to Mirusio Bulzacchi.
It is fascinating to think about what it must
have felt like to be the very first names etched
into a record that would end up spanning over
50 years. It established an institution essentially
overnight. And looking at the broader context
of that era is vital for anyone trying to understand
the data. The late 70s and early 80s, I mean,
they read like a who's who of a genuine golden
era in Polish football. They really do. You see
absolute legends of the game taking the top prize.
Zbigniew Boniek won it in 1978 and again in 1982.
Grzygór's Lotto took the honors in 1981. Henrik
Kaspersak won back -to -back in 1976 and 1977.
And if you look closely at the source material
for those early years, something really stands
out about where those legends were actually playing.
The club affiliations. Yes. We aren't seeing
names like Real Madrid or Manchester United next
to these winners. You see clubs like Stalmilek,
Ruch, Corso, and Wudzuodu. completely dominating
the winner's circle. What's fascinating here
is what those club names represent about the
era. Tell me more about that. Well, for example,
you see winners from Stal Milek, which was a
club heavily supported by and built around local
steel workers. Right. Hence the name Stal, meaning
steel. Exactly. Then you see Ruch Kordzo, a club
emerging straight from the industrial heartlands
of the country. It paints a picture of a highly
localized, gritty, working class football landscape.
Very different from today. Completely different.
It was an era long before the modern mega -money
TV deals completely transformed the sport into
a global corporate enterprise. So if all the
top talent was completely domestic, did the rest
of Europe even notice Polish football at the
time? Or did that domestic isolation forced the
local game to evolve in its own unique way. Oh,
the rest of Europe certainly noticed, especially
during major international tournaments. But the
day -to -day ecosystem was deeply domestic. The
best players in the country were retained at
home. So the fans could just take a bus down
the street to see the best player in the country.
Exactly. You didn't have to look to Spain or
England to find the Polish player of the year.
They were playing right in the local stadiums.
But to address your second point, that intense
domestic focus did force a deeper look at the
tactics. tactical side of the game locally. Or
the strategy of it all. Yeah. The organizers
of the plebiscite quickly realized that the game
wasn't just about the players on the pitch. Which
explains the first major expansion of the trophy
cabinet in the data. It started with just Player
of the Year and Newcomer of the Year in 1973.
But by 1975, they recognized they needed to honor
the tactical minds behind these domestic powerhouses.
They had to acknowledge the managers. Right.
So they added the Coach of the Year category.
Leszek Cizirski was the very first recipient
for his work managing Wydzio Du. Adding the coach
of the year category was a vital step. It acknowledged
that football was becoming a much more sophisticated
strategic discipline. And over the decades, looking
at the coaching data reveals its own compelling
narrative. It really does. We see some absolute
titans establish dominance in a profession that
is, let's face it, notoriously volatile and unforgiving.
Managers usually get fired after a few bad months.
There is a great trivia nugget hidden in the
coaching category if you ever find yourself needing
a tiebreaker at a sports trivia night. Two names
stand head and shoulders above the rest in the
data. Oh, Francis Csikszentmihalyi and Paul Giannis.
Yes. They hold a joint record with four Coach
of the Year wins each. To win four times as a
manager is an incredible feat of longevity. Their
wins span across different domestic clubs, and
in Giannis' case, even managing the national
team. Which is a totally different skill set.
Completely. It requires an incredible ability
to adapt to different locker rooms, different
generations of players, and constantly shifting
tactical trends. But as the 70s and 80s bled
into the 90s and early 2000s, the borders of
European football really began to open up. The
Bozeman ruling, the fall of the Iron Curtain,
everything changed. Exactly. And the data in
the plebiscite. shifts dramatically to reflect
a newly connected world. Here's where it gets
really interesting. They added a foreigner of
the year category, which just feels like a major
cultural milestone for a domestic league. It
absolutely was a milestone. The inclusion of
the foreigner of the year category entirely signifies
the globalization of the Polish league. It's
an admission that the world is getting smaller.
Yes. It served as an official acknowledgement
that the growth and success of Polish football
were now being actively shaped by international
talent, both on the pitch and on the touchline.
You look at the list and see winners like Duszyn
Rydalski taking the award in 2003 for his work
with Dyskobolia Grodzisk Wielkopolsky. A great
example. But perhaps the most jarring entry for
a traditionalist at the time would have been
Leo Benhocker winning it in 2006. Oh, Benhocker's
win is incredibly significant. He won the Foreigner
of the Year award, but he wasn't playing or managing
in the domestic league. Right. He was managing
the national team. Exactly. He was a Dutchman
managing the Poland men's national team. Bringing
in a foreign manager to run the national squad
was a huge shock to the system for many. A lot
of local pride on the line. Yeah. But winning
this award showed a widespread journalistic recognition
of the impact international expertise was having
on the country's footballing identity. That opening
of borders, conceptually speaking, eventually
led to the most vital modernization of the awards.
It took a frustratingly long time, but in 2015,
they finally shattered the glass ceiling and
introduced the Women's Player of the Year category.
It was a massively overdue recognition. The women's
game had been growing steadily in prominence,
professionalism, and tactical sophistication.
You just couldn't ignore it anymore. No. By the
time 2015 rolled around, ignoring that half of
the sport was no longer a tenable position for
a plebiscite claiming to represent the entirety
of Polish football. The inaugural winner of the
Women's Player of the Year was Katarzyna Kiczorzynek.
And looking at her club affiliation. Paris Saint
-Germain immediately tells you that the Women's
Award didn't start in a localized domestic era
like the Men's Award did in the 70s. That's a
really sharp observation. It started right in
the middle of the globalized international era.
Kijinek was already competing at the absolute
pinnacle of European club football. That is a
brilliant distinction to make. The women's winners
were instantly reflecting that international
export pipeline. And it is wonderful to see that
the progression of the awards hasn't stalled
out. They are still expanding. Yes, the plebiscite
is still actively evolving to capture the full
spectrum of the sport today. We see that evolution
right up to our current era. Just last year,
in 2025, they introduced the brand new... Women's
Newcomer of the Year category. A great addition.
The very first winner was Polina Tomasiak, playing
for Gornik Ishna. Building out this infrastructure
of recognition is so important because it gives
younger players a tangible roadmap of success
to aspire to. It provides a much more complete,
holistic picture of the footballing landscape.
However, even with all this expansion. Right.
The new categories, the women's game, the foreigners.
Exactly. Even with all of that, there is one
narrative thread in this data that threatens
to completely eclipse everything else. Oh, I
know exactly what you're going to say, because
looking at this data, you just have to pause.
One name just swallows the entire list for over
a decade. It's hard to even comprehend. If you
are scanning the columns from the late 2000s
onward. The mathematical odds of holding the
top spot for as long as this player did are just
staggering. Robert Lewandowski's record is an
absolute anomaly. It is unprecedented in the
history of this award. And frankly, it is rare
to see this level of individual monopolization
in any major sporting honor anywhere in the world.
As of 2026, Robert Lewandowski has won the Player
of the Year award 13 times. 13? At a certain
point, he must have just run out of mantelpiece
space in his house. He had to build a new wing
just for these trophies. To put that astronomical
number into perspective for you, the next highest
multiple winner in the entire 50 -year history
of the plebiscite is E .B. Smolarek, who has
three wins. And three wins is huge. Right. Smolarek
achieved a highly impressive three -peat from
2005 to 2007. Three wins is a fantastic Hall
of Fame caliber career. Thirteen wins is a monopoly.
It is a level of sustained excellence that almost
defies logic. But what the sources allow us to
do is track his chronological footprint. We can
see this dominance build year by year, club by
club. He didn't just appear fully formed as a
global superstar. Let's trace that path because
it really is the ultimate footballing journey.
He first pops up in the sources in 2008 as the
newcomer of the year. At that time, he was playing
domestically for Znicz Brzyzko and Lekopozna.
Just a highly touted young talent making his
mark in the local leagues. The progression from
that point is incredibly rapid. By the very next
year, 2009, he is named the Extra Klasa Player
of the Year. And just to give that context, the
Extra Klasa is the top tier domestic league in
Poland. So he had completely conquered the local
landscape by his early 20s. And then the floodgates
open. From 2011 all the way to 2025, he essentially
owns the main Player of the Year award. You can
trace his climb through the elite ranks of European
football right there on the winner's table. It's
a map of his career. He starts winning it while
making his name at Borussia Dortmund in Germany.
Then he continues his tyrannical reign through
his peak years at Bayern Munich. And he is still
winning it while playing for Barcelona in Spain.
The consistency is staggering. But honestly,
in a reign that long, what almost highlights
his dominance more than his wins? are the rare
interruptions. The years someone else actually
managed to win. Yes. You have to look at the
years he didn't win during that 15 -year span
to truly appreciate the grip he had on the award.
There are only two blips on his radar during
that entire era. Lukasz Fadijewski won it in
2018, and Piotr Ziszewski took the award in 2023.
What kind of season does it actually take to
unseat a 13 -time winner? It requires an individual
performance that is absolutely undeniable to
the voting journalists. It has to be a season
so spectacular or a narrative so compelling that
it momentarily breaks the gravitational pull
of Lewandowski's legacy. Because momentum is
a real thing in voting. It is. It underscores
just how incredibly high the bar was set. You
had to have a career -defining year just to edge
them out once. While Lewandowski's sheer number
of trophies is an anomaly, the pattern of absolute
dominance at the top of the sport isn't exclusive
to the men's game. Not at all. When we look at
the Women's Player of the Year category, we see
a striking parallel with Iwa Pejor. She has established
a massive stranglehold of her own. Her trajectory
commands the exact same narrative weight. Since
the Women's Award was introduced and matured,
Pejor has been the defining force. Looking at
the sources, she has won multiple times, taking
the trophy in 2018 and 2019, and then going on
a massive uninterrupted run from 2022 through
2025. Incredible consistency. And just like Lewandowski.
Her club trajectory tells a story of reaching
the absolute highest echelons of the global game.
She is winning these awards while playing for
massive elite international clubs like VFL Wolfsburg
in Germany and Barcelona in Spain. They are essentially
on the same path. It is parallel dominance, showcasing
how top Polish talent, regardless of gender,
is now anchoring the biggest clubs in the world.
Which brings us to a really interesting conceptual
point in our analysis. We have looked at the
history, the localized beginnings, the experience.
expansion of categories, and these modern eras
of individual dominance. So how do we tie this
all together? If you are listening to this, and
maybe you aren't a diehard follower of the Polish
extraklasa, why does this long list of names
matter to the broader sporting world? It's a
valid question. Think of it this way. Reading
this Wikipedia table. is exactly like reading
the tree rings of European sports. That is a
perfect analogy. If we connect this to the bigger
economic picture, the sources vividly illustrate
the talent export pipeline that has completely
redefined modern European football over the last
50 years. Right. From local to global. Think
back to our discussion about the 1970s and early
80s. The winners all played for domestic clubs.
Stalmilek, Wudzu Odu, the talent was kept at
home. But then you look at 1982. Zbigniew Panigat
wins the award, but the club listed next to his
name is Juventus in Italy. A massive moment.
When Bojnik went to Juventus, it wasn't just
a standard transfer, it was a massive cultural
event. Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain
at that time. Politically, economically, it was
a completely divided Europe. Exactly. Seeing
a Polish star command the stage in a wealthy
Western European league like Italy's Serie A
was a monumental point of national pride. And
it signaled a major shift in the economic realities
of the sport. Exactly. It was the first major
crack in that localized ecosystem. Now, trace
the clubs of the winners as the years progress.
The trickle becomes a flood. The names just keep
getting bigger. You see Jersey Dudek winning
the award in 2000 while playing for Feyenoord
in the Netherlands. You see Wojcik Szczesny winning
Newcomer of the Year in 2011 while playing for
Arsenal in the English Premier League. And we
already mentioned Piotr Zieliszki winning in
2023 while at Napoli. The list of clubs reads
like a map of where the financial center of gravity
in football has shifted over the decades. It
really does. It is a visual representation of
how the global scouting network expanded and
how top talent inevitably gravitates toward the
biggest. to most economically powerful leagues
in Europe. But there is another layer to this
data beyond just the economics of where individuals
are playing. The plebiscite also acts as a barometer
for the pulse of national pride. And you see
this most clearly when you look at the team of
the year category. That category might be the
most fascinating one to track because it fluctuates
so wildly depending on the mood of the country.
It is incredibly volatile. Sometimes it reflects
moments of pure, unified national euphoria. You
look at the data and see the Poland men's national
team winning team of the year in 2001, 2004,
and 2015. Those were huge years. Those were years
where the national team captured the imagination
of the entire country, usually through thrilling
major tournament qualifications or standout performances
on the international stage that brought everyone
together. But then in other years, the mood shifts
inward. The award reflects the emergence of a
dominant domestic dynasty that simply cannot
be ignored. A perfect example in the recent data
is Rakau Chistichowa. They took the team of the
year prize in 2020, 2021 and 2023. What makes
a local club beat out the national team for that
honor? It signifies a period where a domestic
club achieved something so structurally and competitively
remarkable within the local league that it overshadowed
the national team in the eyes of the voting journalists.
A compelling local narrative. Exactly. Rakow's
rise was a phenomenal story of building a powerhouse.
It shows the constant push and pull in the voting
between celebrating local, grassroots success
and aspiring to international glory. It really
is incredible how much narrative is baked into
this one seemingly simple Wikipedia article.
You just have to know where to look. What initially
looked like an overwhelming ledger of names and
dates is actually a thrilling 50 -year documentary
of a nation's sporting evolution. We have traced
the journey from local working -class heroes
playing in a purely domestic ecosystem in the
1970s, all the way to 13 -time global superstars
commanding the stage at the biggest, wealthiest
clubs in the world today. It is a testament to
the power of structured data to tell a profoundly
human story about ambition, economics and cultural
shifts. But as we wrap up our analysis of this
history, looking specifically at that modern
era of individual dominance we discussed, it
does leave us with a fascinating dynamic to consider.
What is the final takeaway you want to leave
everyone with? We have to remember that this
plebiscite is voted on by human journalists.
When you have a player like Robert Lewandowski
winning 13... times over 15 years, it forces
us to ask a difficult question about how history
is recorded. Right, the human element of voting.
Exactly. At what point does a player's historical
legacy make it impossible for voters to view
anyone else objectively? Does a 13 -time winner
represent an undeniable mathematical gap in physical
talent compared to his peers? Or does the story
just become too big? Right. Does it eventually
represent the incredible power of a narrative,
a status quo that voters simply can't let go
of, even when other players might be having statistically
superior individual seasons? That is a great
question. It is something to keep in mind the
next time you see any player of the year trophy
handed out in any sport. Are we rewarding the
best year or are we rewarding the biggest legend?