Although the European club competitions are still at the qualifying stage, all but one of the Polish representatives have already been eliminated. And it is only because of UEFA’s second-chance opportunity that champions Lech Poznan will be given another bite of the cherry, in the lesser of the two competitions, the Europa League.

And when you look at their performances so far, not many can hold out much hope of the Kolejorz surviving the forthcoming play-off against Dniepropetrovsk and reaching the coveted group stage. It can be safely assumed that once again Polish club interests in Europe will be extinguished long before the end of the year.

The Ekstraklasa is, according to the UEFA coefficient, the 26th strongest league in Europe, well below the Greek league (11th), Czech (18th) and Austrian (19th) in which the Polish clubs’ conquerors Aris Thessaloniki FC, Sparta Prague and FK Austria Wien play.

Last season 2009-10 told a very similar story with all four clubs Wisla, Legia, Lech and Polonia Warszawa falling in the qualifying stages. And just like this season, three went out to clubs from higher-ranked leagues: Lech to Bruges of Belgium, Polonia to Breda of Holland while Legia went down to Danish side Brondby. A year ago Wisla also disgraced themselves getting knocked out by a club from an even weaker league than Azerbaijan’s - Estonia.

Therefore no one should be surprised at these latest results, because the Ekstraklasa is a weak league made up of weak clubs.
But why on earth should Poland, which has a large population of 38 million and is by no means a poor country, have a weaker football league than say, its neighbor Ukraine (ranked 6th), Romania (13th), Israel (17th), Cyprus (20th), Bulgaria (21st) or even Belarus (25th)? The old excuse that the best players leave to play abroad doesn’t hold water anymore.

The same happens with the best Ukrainians, Romanians, Bulgarians and Belorussians. No one knows the answer, however, there seems to be one cure which turns weak football clubs into good ones – lots of money. Look what it did for Chelsea, the English Premier League in general and Shakhtar Donetsk? There is no reason why it could not do the same for Polish football clubs, but they need to find wealthy backers, and in this Polish football finds itself in the classic ‘Catch 22’ situation. Wealthy backers will only put money into clubs which they think have potential to do well in Europe. But Polish clubs will not do well in Europe until they have good players being motivated by high earnings – which needs wealthy backers.

There is one such wealthy backer in Polish football at the moment, Jozef Wojciechowski. But his money goes into a club with very little tradition, little support and a tiny old stadium, Polonia Warszawa. If they do well this season, it is difficult to see them doing any better in the hurly burly of European football next season.

Hopefully, when the traditional big clubs such as Legia, Lech and Wisla Krakow finally enter the twenty-first century and start playing out of decent stadiums at last, this might attract big money through corporate and individual backers.