“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Lechia have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Lechia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Zhelizko is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Aleksandar Ćirković was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Marked 9.02 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lechia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Alex Paulsen has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Rifet Kapić falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Ivan Zhelizko was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Lechia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rifet Kapić is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Camilo Mena was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Ivan Zhelizko falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Marked 8.96 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
Words at Lechia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rifet Kapić is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Diego Renan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lechia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Rifet Kapić falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Maksym Diachuk has come out of that comparison in the side, and Lechia have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
4 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lechia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Lechia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ivan Zhelizko is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Diego Renan is 36 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Michał Głogowski, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.64
A mark of 7.64 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Lechia, and it is not being withdrawn.
24 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
He is going to Tottenham, the club has $8.4M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lechia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Karpaty will make the call about Dawid Kurminowski this week. Lechia have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Alex Paulsen knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
In brief
SquadThe manager has not finished forgetting Alex Paulsen's mistake
Two goals and a mark of 8.70 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The name of Tomáš Bobček has come up in conversations Lechia were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Tomáš Bobček was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Lechia and Slask in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Camilo Mena has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
The offer from Istra 1961 for Dawid Kurminowski was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The terraces3 Aug 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 6 of the 24 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
7.65, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Camilo Mena wants continental football; whether Lechia can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lechia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The phone has started ringing about Michał Głogowski again, and this time the name on the line is Podbeskidzie. Lechia are listening politely and promising nothing.