Warsaw is home to one major professional football club and a number of smaller clubs. The only one currently playing in the first division (Ekstraklasa) is Legia Warsaw.
Warsaw is home to one major professional football club and a number of smaller clubs. The only one currently playing in the first division (Ekstraklasa) is Legia Warsaw.
On 9 April 2008 the President of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, obtained from the mayor of Stuttgart Wolfgang Schuster a challenge award – a commemorative plaque awarded to Warsaw as the European Capital of Sport in 2008. [1]
The Stadion Narodowy, holds a capacity of 58,500 seat football (soccer) stadium, Warsaw's recently demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium. [2] The national stadium hosted the opening match, two group matches, a quarter-final, and a semi-final of UEFA Euro 2012, hosted jointly by Poland and Ukraine. [3]
There are many sports centres in the city as well. Most of these facilities are swimming pools and sports halls, many of them built by the municipality in the past several years. The main indoor venue is Hala Torwar, used for all kinds of indoor sports (it was a venue for the 2009 EuroBasket [4] but it is also used as an indoor skating rink. There is also open-air skating rink (Stegny) and the horse racetrack (Służewiec).
The best of the city's swimming centres is at Wodny Park Warszawianka, 4 km south of the centre at Merliniego Street, where there's an Olympic-sized pool as well as water slides and children's areas. [5]
From the Warsovian football teams, the most famous is Legia Warsaw – the army club with a nationwide following play at Polish Army Stadium, just southeast of the centre at Łazienkowska Street. Established in 1916, they have won the country's championship fifteen times (most recently in 2021) and won the Polish Cup nineteen times. In the 1995–96 UEFA Champions League season, they reached the quarter-finals, where they lost to Greek club Panathinaikos.
Their local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win Ekstraklasa Championship in 2000. They also won the country’s championship in 1946, and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town.
Warsaw was chosen as one of four Polish cities to host the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament alongside Ukraine. Its Stadion Narodowy hosted just under a sixth of the games in the competition. It hosted 3 group A matches (including the opening game), 1 quarter-final and 1 semi-final at the European tournament. [6] Its city emblem (a mermaid) was chosen as the badge to symbolise the area. The city has also 4 teams who have their team base there or thereabouts: Russia, Croatia, Greece and of course, Poland. [7] The stadium is fully equipped including a folding roof (largest cubic volume in Europe) and a 56,000 seater capacity. The host stadium was only completed in November 2011, under a year before the start of UEFA Euro 2012 and it has hosted 2/3 of Poland's group matches. [8]
| Club | Sport | Founded | League | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legia Warsaw [9] | Football | 1916 | Ekstraklasa | Polish Army Stadium |
| Polonia Warsaw [10] | Football | 1911 | III liga | Stadion Miejski im. gen. Kazimierza Sosnkowskiego |
| Legia Warsaw [11] | Basketball | 1947 | Polska Liga Koszykówki | OSiR Bemowo |
| Polonia Warsaw [12] | Basketball | 1925 | dissolved | |
| Verva Warsaw | Volleyball | 1954 | PlusLiga | Arena COS Torwar |
| Cumann Warsaw | Gaelic Football and Hurling | 2009 | European Gaelic Football Championship | Stadion Skra, Pole Mokotowskie |
| Królewscy Warsaw | American Football | 2012 | Polska Liga Futbolu Amerykańskiego | Hutnik Stadium |
Legia Warszawa, commonly referred to as Legia Warsaw or simply Legia, is a professional football club based in Warsaw, Poland. Legia is the most successful Polish football club in history, winning record 15 Ekstraklasa champions titles, a record 20 Polish Cup and 5 Polish SuperCup trophies. The club's home venue is the Polish Army Stadium. Legia is the only Polish club never to have been relegated from the top flight of Polish football since World War II.
Polonia Warsaw, founded on 19 November 1911, is the oldest existing sports club in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, best known for its football and basketball teams. It also has track and field, swimming, chess, mountain biking, and contract bridge sections. Historically it also had sections in ice hockey, fencing, tennis, volleyball, hazena, cycling and boxing.
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Michał Ryszard Żewłakow is a Polish former footballer who played as a defender. He captained the Poland national team and is its third most capped player ever. Besides Poland, he has played in Belgium, Greece, and Turkey.
The Stadion Wojska Polskiego, officially named Stadion Miejski Legii Warszawa im. Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego is an all-seater, highest fourth category football-specific stadium in Śródmieście district of Warsaw, the city's downtown on the south bank of river Vistula. It is the home ground of Legia Warsaw football club, who have been playing there since 9 August 1930.
Stadion Miejski im. gen. Kazimierza Sosnkowskiego or Stadion Polonii Warszawa, known colloquially as K6, is a multi-purpose stadium in Warsaw, Poland.
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The Stadion Narodowy im. Kazimierza Górskiego, known for sponsorship reasons as the PGE Narodowy since 2015, is a retractable roof football stadium located in Warsaw, Poland. It is used mostly for concerts and football matches and is the home stadium of Poland national football team.
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Czesław Michniewicz is a Polish football manager and former player who manages Saudi Professional League side Abha. He managed the Poland national team in 2022.
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The following is a timeline of the history of Warsaw in Poland.
The 2017–18 Polish Cup was the sixty-fourth season of the annual Polish football knockout tournament. It began on 14 July 2017 with the first matches of the preliminary round and ended on 2 May 2018 with the final at PGE Narodowy. Winners of the competition, Legia Warsaw, qualified for the qualifying tournament of the 2018–19 UEFA Europa League. They secured their 19th Polish Cup title ever, after defeating 2–