PZPN president Listkiewicz has agreed to resign later this year

Polish soccer scandals hit national headlines this month, following the arrest of six people connected with first division club Kolporter Kielce on grounds of match-fixing. The arrests included that of Dariusz Wdowczyk, a leading Polish soccer coach earmarked to become a future coach of the national team.

There has been much public outrage at the recent arrests and the state of Polish soccer, despite the recent events being just a small part of a much broader investigation into soccer corruption dating back to 2005, which has so far resulted in some 100 arrests.

"PZPN [The Polish Football Association] is a brothel in which the whores spread HIV," said Janusz Palikot, an MP from the Civic Platform party and the head of the government's anti-bureaucracy initiative, live on television station TVN. Justice Minister Zbigniew Ćwiąkalski declared he would increase the number of the prosecutors in the investigation.

The corruption issue dominated the PZPN summit two weeks ago, and its president, Michał Listkiewicz, agreed to resign from his post. However, Listkiewicz said he would not resign before September 14, so as not to disturb the preparations for the European championships in Austria this year, among other reasons.

Searching for a cure

Still, the sport has been shaken to its foundations. The high-profile coach of Poland's national team, Leo Beenhakker, last week called into question his own future in Polish soccer.

"I'm very concerned about the consequences of all this in relation with the future of Polish football, and of course the future of Polish football is for the moment also my future," he told reporters.

But even if corruption is unanimously condemned, the strategies for combating it are diverse and often controversial. This makes it hard for industry leaders to reach an agreement on how to move forward, as the summit showed. Representatives of PZPN, together with first division managing firm Ekstraklasa and television station Canal+, which airs the division's matches, failed to reach an agreement to reform the system for preventing and penalizing corruption.

As a possible solution to the crisis, PZPN has requested that Minister of Sport and Tourism Mirosław Drzewiecki appoint a soccer prosecutor to tackle issues like corruption, doping, racism and vandalism.

Search for a leader

Industry experts have now begun speculating on who may succeed Listkiewicz as PZPN president. Former Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz was reported by daily Dziennik to be interested in the post. Several prominent PO politicians confirmed the reports.

The new president must come from outside of the football world and cannot be related to PZPN, said Jan Tomaszewski, a legendary former goal keeper on Poland's national team. "Everybody has dirt on everybody and no movements have been made that would fix Polish football," he told the Polish Press Agency, stressing that PZPN's management style and management selection methods need to change.

President of the Physical Education and Sport Committee (KFS), Elżbieta Jakubiak, agreed that thorough changes need to be made to PZPN, "The [PZPN] officials do not feel that their positions are threatened and they are not able to generate the new leaders," she told PAP.

The tainted image of Polish soccer has started to deter sponsors. Telekomunikacja Polska, the major sponsor behind Orange Extraklasa, refused to prolong its contract following the revelations.

However, Minister of Interior and Administration Grzegorz Schetyna is optimistic about the game's future. "There is a chance that we can carry out the restructuring of Polish football, slowly but systematically," he told the press.