Welcome to today's deep dive. If you're joining
us, it's probably because you're... that specific
type of person who just wants to be in the know.
Yeah, the kind of person who loves diving into
a really dense topic. Exactly. You want to come
out the other side with a completely new perspective,
but you definitely don't want to spend like three
weeks reading dry encyclopedias to get there.
Which is completely understandable. Right. And
that's exactly what we're doing today. We're
looking at a comprehensive Wikipedia data set
that covers over 50 years of history. Specifically,
we're examining the annual football awards given
And just as a quick fun fact for anyone wondering,
that title literally translates to football.
Football, yeah. Two words. It's a remarkably
rich data set, though I'll admit when you first
open the source material, it just looks like
an incredibly long, somewhat intimidating table
of names, years, and clubs. Yeah, just rows and
rows of data. Right. It doesn't exactly screen
thrilling narrative at first glance, but when
you really start analyzing the columns and specifically
the progression of the winners over time, it
reveals this incredible story about the evolution
of a sport. That's a pretty bold claim, though.
I mean, a giant table of names and dates doesn't
sound like an incredible story right out at the
gate. True. So how do we get from a magazine's
annual poll to a sprawling historical narrative?
Our mission for this deep dive is to unpack exactly
that. We want to track how a single domestic
journalistic award evolved from recognizing local
hometown talent into a massive global barometer
of sporting excellence. OK, let's unpack this.
does this story begin? Because I'm guessing football
in Poland didn't just magically start in the
1970s. You're right. It definitely didn't. The
continuous formalized tradition of the Pekanuna
plebiscite, which is basically just a massive
formalized poll voted on by a jury of journalists.
That began in 1973. Now, the source material
does point out that before 1973, there were similar
polls conducted by a Katowice -based weekly newspaper
called Sport. Sport. Very straightforward name.
Very. And those older polls date back to 1966,
featuring a player named Zygmunt Anksak. And
they included legendary names like Vucimierz
Lubacki and Stanislaw Ushlizio. So why don't
we start there? Like, why is 1973 the magic number
for this data set? Because those earlier sport
newspaper polls were just less frequent. and
far less formalized across multiple categories.
Gotcha. The reason 1973 is our true starting
line and the reason an annual formalized award
matters so much to historians and analysts is
because it creates an unbroken data set. Yeah,
that consistency is key. Exactly. When you have
journalists voting every single year using a
consistent framework, you can actually start
tracking historical trends. You can see the ebbs
and flows of a nation's sporting culture, the
economic shifts, the migration of talent. That
makes total sense. The unbroken line is what
lets you actually see the patterns over time.
Right. So let's step into our time machine and
head back to that inaugural year of the Picanuna
Awards. 1973. The very first player of the year
goes to Kazimierz Dana, a midfielder playing
for Ligia Warsaw. And the very first newcomer
of the year goes to Marisa Bulzaki. When you
look at these early years, there's a very specific
flavor to the data, isn't there? What's fascinating
here is the complete domestic insulation of the
awards in that era. Domestic insulation? Yeah.
If you look at the entirety of the 1970s in this
data set, there's a clear, undeniable pattern.
Every single winner of the main player of the
year award was playing for a domestic Polish
club at the time they won. Wow. Every single
one. Every single one. You've got Dana at Legion
Warsaw in 73 and 74. Right. Zygmunt Maszyk at
Ruch Korczow in 75. Henrik Kaspersak at Stalmulek
in 76 and 77. Zigny Boniek at Widju Odu in 78.
And Wojciech Rudi at Zagubi Sosnević in 79. So
if we had this unbroken chain from the 70s, does
it just stay a predictable, pristine list of
domestic players year after year? You'd think
so. But the data throws a massive curveball right
at the start of the next decade. We hit 1980,
and the player of the year column is just blank.
Blank. It simply wasn't awarded. Wait, Blank,
did they cancel the whole ceremony that year?
That's the fascinating part. They didn't. They
still awarded a Newcomer of the Year to Piotr
Skrobowski from Wissi Sokrakol. Okay. They handed
out Code to the Year to Hubert Koska from Zombiorki
Bidem. But the top prize... The absolute pinnacle
of the awards. Yeah. Deliberately left empty.
Man, that is a serious flex of editorial power.
It really is. When a jury of sports journalists
withholds the top prize, they aren't just saying
no one was good. They're sending a deliberate,
highly publicized message to the entire footballing
establishment that the standard has completely
dropped. Exactly. Imagine hosting a massive,
glitzy awards gala, bringing everyone together
and then just staring down the audience from
the podium to say, actually, none of you earned
this. harder next year. It's a fantastic point.
And it happens more than once in the data set.
Fast forward to 2003. If you look at the coach
of the year category, it explicitly says not
awarded. But right next to it, the journalists
added a note that a distinction was given to
Joszek Zieliski, who was managing Gornik Shrijna
at the time. A distinction that's almost worse
than getting nothing. Yeah. It's like getting
a gold star for participation while they lock
the actual trophy in a vault. It really is. And
it brings up a crucial point for you as the listener
to keep in mind when looking at this kind of
source material. We look at tables and spreadsheets,
and we tend to think of them as objective scientific
outputs. It's just data, right? Right. It feels
very absolute. But these historical gaps, these
withheld trophies and passive -aggressive distinctions,
are a stark reminder that this is a juried award.
These are human beings making highly subjective,
sometimes very critical decisions about the state
of their sport. Which changes how you read the
whole thing. Exactly. If they feel no one met
the standard of excellence for the main award
in 1980, or no coach deserved the outright title
in 2003, they simply withhold it. They protect
the prestige of the award by refusing to hand
it out. It adds so much personality to what would
otherwise just be a spreadsheet. But moving past
those brilliant little oddities, the data set
also shows how the scope of the awards began
to rapidly expand. Oh, massively. The magazine
didn't just stick to player and newcomer of the
year. Over the decades, they started aggressively
adding to the trophy cabinet. We see the introduction
of coach of the year, team of the year, foreigner
of the year, extra classe player, I -liga player,
which represents the second tier of Polish football,
and eventually women's player and women's newcomer
of the year. The expansion of the categories
really mirrors the professionalization and the
widening scope of modern football globally. You
can't capture the reality of the sport with just
two awards anymore. No, the game is too complex
now. Right. Take the Coach of the Year category,
for instance. It officially starts appearing
in the data set around 1975, first awarded to
Leszek Jasierski. And if you want to know who
the true architects, the absolute survivors of
Polish football were over the last few decades,
you just have to look at the joint record holders
in this specific column. Who are they? Princess
Xmuda and Poe Giannis. They each hold four Coach
of the Year titles. Four each is just wild in
the coaching world. It really is an anomaly.
Because managers are usually hired to be fired.
Winning it four times means you aren't just having
a lucky season, you're defining an era. Or in
their cases, multiple eras. Precisely. Xmuda
won his first two back -to -back in 1996 and
1997 while managing with Zuorudu. He won again
in 1999, splitting his time between Wissow Krakow
and Lizio Warsaw. Wow. And then he pulls off
a fourth win nearly a decade later in 2008 with
Lech Posna. You have to constantly adapt your
tactical approach to stay relevant for that long.
Yeah. The game completely changed between 96
and 2008. It really did. Then you have Poe Yiannis,
who mirrors that kind of longevity. He won back
-to -back in 1994 and 1995 with Lugia Warsaw.
Okay. And then had his own massive resurgence,
winning in 2004 and 2005. But for those later
wins, he wasn't managing a club. He was the coach
of the Poland men's national team. That shows
an incredible ability to navigate a profession
that is notoriously unforgiving. Now, speaking
of these expanding categories, here's where it
gets really interesting. Oh, yeah. Let's look
closely at the foreigner of the year category.
On paper, this is supposed to be for the best
non -Polish player operating within the Polish
domestic system, right? A way to honor the international
talent elevating the local weed. But in 2006,
the data takes a weird turn. The winner of the
foreigner of the year wasn't a player at all.
No, it wasn't. It was Leo Benhacker, the coach
of the Poland men's national team. It's a brilliant
little loophole that journalists utilized. Benhacker
is a legendary Dutch manager, a massive international
name. Yeah. And in 2006, his impact on the Polish
national team was apparently so profound, so
transformative that the voting journalists felt
he was undeniably the most important foreign
figure in Polish football. Period. That's hilarious.
They just ignored their own category definition.
They really did. Whether they were on the pitch
wearing cleats or on the sidelines in a suit.
Ben Hacker was the foreigner who mattered most
that year. It's just another perfect example
of how subjective and narrative driven these
awards really are. The journalists wanted to
honor him, so they just bent their own rules
to make it happen. Exactly. And while we're on
the subject of foreign influence blurring the
lines of the data set, we have to talk about
Emmanuel Elissadebe. Yes. In 2001, he actually
won the overall player of the year award. He
was a Nigerian born striker who gained Polish
citizenship and became an absolute superstar.
star, playing for Polonia Warsaw, then moving
to Panathinaikos and becoming a hero for the
Polish national team. You can see how the strict
definition of what constitutes Polish football
is starting to blur, expand and modernize by
the early 2000s. Which perfectly sets the stage
for the modern era of this data set. Because
if the early decades of the Picanuna plebiscite
were about identifying local homegrown heroes,
and the early 2000s were about expanding the
borders, the current era is entirely defined
by absolute, unprecedented global dominance by
a select few. Right. So we see the awards slowly
moving abroad in the early 2000s. The talent
is starting to migrate. But starting around 2011,
this trickle of foreign winners turns into an
absolute tsunami. And it's driven by one man.
We have to talk about the Titan in the data set.
Robert Lewandowski. We can't talk about Polish
football without him. If you look at the source
material up through the year 2026, the numbers
attached to his name are just staggering. He
holds the record with 13 player of the year wins.
13. To really put that in perspective for you,
the person in second place on the all -time list
is Ibi Smolarik, who won it three times. Three
times compared to 13. Exactly. And Ibi Smolarik
was a fantastic, highly celebrated player. He
won three in a row in 2005, 2006, and 2007 while
playing out in Western Europe for Borussia Dortmund
and Racing Santander. That was considered a massive
achievement. Right. A legendary run. But what
Lewandowski has done is completely shatter the
scale of the award. He didn't just break the
record. He made it entirely unreachable. It really
is incredible to trace his specific timeline
through this data because he doesn't just magically
appear at the top of the mountain. You can watch
him level up in real time, column by column.
Yes, you can see his entire career arc. In 2008,
he wins Newcomer of the Year while playing domestically
for Znicz Pruskow and Lech Puzna. The very next
year, 2009, he takes a step up and wins the extra
class of player of the year, which is the specific
award for the best player in the domestic top
slight league, still playing with Lech Posna.
And then he leaves the country and the floodgates
open. From 2011 onward, the main player of the
year award essentially becomes the Robert Lewandowski
Invitational. The Invitational. That's perfect.
He wins it seven consecutive times from 2011
to 2017. Then. After goalkeeper Ukas Fabianski
briefly interrupts the streak in 2018, Lewandowski
just starts a new streak. Unbelievable. He wins
another four in a row from 2019 to 2022. He picks
it up again in 2024 and then again in 2025. But
the most crucial detail here isn't just the sheer
number of wins. It's where he's playing during
this 13 -win monolith of a run. He's not playing
in Warsaw or Poznań. No, he isn't. He's at Borussia
Dortmund. Then he's at Bayern Munich, which is
where he secures the bulk of his wins and becomes
a global superstar. And he moves to Barcelona.
Right. He essentially took the most prestigious
Polish football award and turned it into a trophy
that lives permanently in Germany and Spain.
Yeah. But as massive as his shadow is, Lewandowski
isn't the only one doing this. We need to pivot
to another massive structural shift in the data
set, which happens in 2015. 2015 is a vital year
to analyze because it marks the formal introduction
of the women's player of the year category. Now,
it's worth noting that introducing this in 2015
means the data set essentially missed decades
of earlier women's football history. That's a
really important caveat, yeah. But the moment
it is introduced, it immediately reflects the
modern reality of the sport. Absolutely. The
moment the category opens, we don't see a slow
buildup of domestic talent like we did with the
Men's Award in the 70s. Right out of the gate,
we see the establishment of the queens of Polish
football, and they are already operating on a
global stage. The category is instantly dominated
by players competing at the absolute highest
levels of the European game. Katarzyna Kijanek
wins the inaugural award in 2015 and then immediately
defends it in 2016 and 2017. Wow. Three in a
row right from the start. And all three times,
she isn't playing in Poland. She's playing for
Para Sonderman, one of the wealthiest, most premier
clubs in the world. She essentially forces the
data set to recognize a whole new demographic
of global Polish excellence. But then another
force of nature enters the chat and completely
takes over, Iwa Pajer. Yes, Iwa Pager's record
in the women's category rapidly starts to mirror
Lewandowski's in the men's. Pager wins the award
six times between 2018 and 2025. Six times. She
wins back -to -back in 2018 and 2019. Then there
is a brief two -year interruption where Polina
Dudak... who notably is also playing for Paris
Saint -Germain wins in 2020 and 2021. Okay. But
Pager returns to firmly reclaim the crown, winning
four consecutive times from 2022 through 2025.
And again, look at the clubs listed next to her
name in the data set. Lua Pajor is winning these
awards while playing for VFL Wolfsburg in Germany,
which is a powerhouse in the women's game. Huge
powerhouse. And then eventually she moves to
Barcelona in Spain. Sound familiar? If we connect
this to the bigger picture, the parallel is undeniable.
Both Lewandowski and Pedro achieved their record
-breaking multi -year dominance not by staying
within the domestic Polish system, but by leaving
it. They became indispensable, transcendent superstars
for massive international mega clubs. We're talking
about Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Wolfsburg, Paris
Saint -Germain. Which brings us to the overarching
narrative hiding in plain sight within the club's
column of this entire data set. It's the story
of a changing world. Yes, absolutely. We mentioned
earlier that in the 1970s, every single winner
played for a Polish club. But as you scroll down
through the decades, through the 80s, the 90s,
the 2000s, you literally watch the globalization
of Polish football happening year by year, row
by row. The pipeline. From domestic talent to
global export becomes starkly clear. You can
actually pinpoint the exact transitional figures
in the data. Look at Zbigniew Boniak. Oh, yeah.
In 1978, he wins Player of the Year while playing
domestically for Widju Yudu. But when he wins
it again in 1982, his club listed is Juventus.
In Italy. Right. He's moved to Italy. That right
there is the turning point in the data set. It
really is the hinge of history. By the time we
hit the 2000s and 2010s, the main player of the
year award is almost completely hijacked by players
at foreign clubs. It's no longer a domestic award
in practice. Never. You have Jerzy Dudek winning
in 2000 while playing for Feyenoord in the Netherlands.
You have Jeschik Krasinoek winning in 2003 and
2004 playing in Germany for Nurnberg and Bayer
Leverkusen. We already talked about Ibi Smolarek
at Borussia Dortmund. Pieter Zieliski wins it
in 2023 playing for... Napoli and Italy, the
ultimate prize for Polish football is now almost
exclusively handed to athletes who don't play
a single minute of club football in Poland anymore.
And that reality, the fact that the main award
effectively migrated to Western Europe, explains
exactly why the magazine had introduced the extra
klasa player of the year category. Because they
needed something else. Right. When your national
talent pool is so good that your absolute best
players are inevitably poached by the English
Premier League, the German Bundesliga, or Spain's
La Liga, you still need a way to recognize the
people actually playing in your local stadiums
week in and week out. It's a bit like the Oscars
versus a local, highly respected indie film festival.
Lewandowski is out in Munich and Barcelona winning
the blockbuster global prize year after year.
But the extra class award is there to make sure
the incredibly vital homegrown indie cinema isn't
ignored. That's a great way to look at it. It
functions almost like a domestic consolation
prize, but an incredibly important one for the
fans who actually buy tickets to local matches.
While the international superstars are off winning
Champions League. leagues, the extra class award
is shining a spotlight on domestic heroes. Exactly.
Players like Tomas Frankowski at Wissow Krakow
in 2004, Kamil Grosicki at Pogo Schutzen in 2022
and 2023, or Jakub Motor at Lech Poznań in 2020.
This category ensures that the local league isn't
forgotten just because the national stars have
gone global. It creates a beautiful duality in
the data set. When you read the columns side
by side, the extra klasa award shows you the
current grounded state of the domestic league,
while the main player of the year award shows
you the maximum limitless potential of the Polish
athlete on the global stage. Okay, let's unpack
this. So what does this all mean for us? We started
looking at a simple list of names in 1973, with
Kazimierz Dana playing for Liga Warsaw, back
in an insulated era where the best players stayed
home. And we journeyed all the way to 2025, an
era completely defined by the staggering, record
-breaking dominance of Robert Lewandowski and
Iwa Pager. Two athletes who have conquered the
sport while playing for some of the biggest global
brands on the planet. Yeah. We've watched a purely
domestic league transform right before our eyes
in the data into a highly effective launch pad
for international superstardom. And along the
way, we've seen how the journalists themselves,
the curators of this history, have had to constantly
adapt. Right. They couldn't just keep things
the same. They added new categories. They made
highly subjective judgment calls. And sometimes
they even withheld awards entirely just to. accurately
capture the rapidly changing landscape of their
sport exactly so the next time you are looking
at a list of award winners whether it is sports
music science or anything else i want you to
challenge yourself don't just read it like a
phone book Look closer. Look beyond the names
of the winners. Look at the locations. Look at
the missing years. Look at how the categories
change over time. Because there are always massive
geographical, economic, and historical shifts
hiding right there in the raw data, just waiting
for someone to notice them. This raises an important
question, though. Something to consider as we
wrap up our conversation today. What's that?
If the ultimate domestic prize in a nation's
sport is almost exclusively won by athletes who
no longer play in that nation, does the award
actually celebrate the strength and vitality
of the country's own footballing system? Or does
it merely highlight its role as a massive factory,
an exporter of premier talent to the rest of
the world? Ooh, that is a fantastic question
to leave hanging in the air. Does it mean the
system is thriving or just really good at saying
goodbye? That is something for you to ponder
long after we are done speaking today. Thank
you for joining us and letting us share this
journey through the archives with you. Keep digging,
keep looking for the hidden stories in the numbers,
and most importantly, keep learning. We'll catch
you next time.