Episode 7: Blaugrana’s Sweet 16

Irish Dave is back with me for our weekly(monthly?) review of the big topics in Polish Sports.

Whilst Barcelona are today in mourning following the sudden death of first team doctor Carles Minarro Garcia, they are in by far the best position since Messi left; leading the LaLiga, having gone 16 matches without defeat and last Wednesday Wojciech Szczęsny rolled back the years with a dominant clean sheet vs Benfica in the Champions League Last 16 1st leg. We'll talk both about him and at the very end give flowers to Łukasz Fabiański discussing why Poland always had no shortage of goalkeepers.

Robert Lewandowski now has 686 career goals for club(s) and country. It seems that we shouldn't just argue whether he's Poland's all time GOAT(maybe let's think of another animal-related acronym), but whether in the last 15 years only two other footballers has achieved more than him and been more consistent.

Poles love their country and athletes, but always complain about it. That's the case with our domestic league, even though two Ekstraklasa clubs have can yet make the Conference League quarterfinals. You have to go back to 1971 for multiple Polish sides to continue in Europe this deep into the season.

Poles are also so cynical that whenever a corruption scandal comes along in our Sports, we typically just shrug. That is the case with Polish Olympic Committee boss Radosław Piesiewicz, who is now accused of defrauding close to $3 million through VAT fraud, which is almost $1 million more than the entire cost of Poland's historically dismal Olympic effort in Paris over which he presided. I list off the other major cases surrounding Polish sporting supremos in recent years.

And with Poland drawing Great Britain in the Davis Cup qualifiers I will explain how the Davis Cup has changed its format for both its survival and detriment.