Polish FA celebrates 105th anniversary
Thursday, December 5, 2024
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The Polish Football Association (PZPN) celebrated its 105th anniversary this week, with the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, and UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin attending the ceremony held in Warsaw.
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Before the event, guests came together to follow the final minutes of the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 play-off second leg against Austria, with Poland celebrating a first-ever qualification for the final tournament courtesy of a late Ewa Pajor goal on her 28th birthday.
"I would like to congratulate Cezary Kulesza for the success of the women’s team, which will participate in the UEFA Women’s EURO for the first time in their history.
I am happy to be here to celebrate this amazing anniversary with you. The history of Polish football is very rich. Poland has great teams who wrote history like Legia Warszawa, Wisła Kraków and now Legia and Jagiellonia Białystok are unbeaten in the UEFA Conference League, and Poland will host the final of this event in Wrocław.
Poland has great football infrastructure, some of which was built for the UEFA EURO in 2012. Since then, Poland has hosted a lot of important events and I am sure you will host many more."
During the event, the PZPN honoured some of the nation's leading former female players, inducting them into the Polish Football Hall of Fame alongside their male counterparts from down the years.
The event in Warsaw was also a fitting occasion to commemorate the Poland men’s team who achieved a remarkable third-place finish in the 1974 World Cup, with some members of the illustrious team present to celebrate 50 years since the landmark performance.
"This event is very important for the whole Polish football family. By organising it, we want to remind ourselves of the most important values that have created our identity.
In a special way, we wanted to honour coach Kazimierz Górski’s legendary team. Emotions created by this team will stay with us forever. Their passion was an inspiration for the next generations. We want to build on it. We want to build on our history.
We have important goals ahead of us like development of women football, which is one of our priorities. That is why we decided that women players are joining men in the Polish Football Hall of Fame."
The PZPN also used the occasion to organise a panel discussion to underline their most important targets for the future, which include:
- Youth development;
- Hosting international events (in 2024 Poland organised the UEFA Super Cup final, and next year will host the UEFA Conference League final and Women’s Under-19 EURO); and
- The continued development of women’s football.
