A picture of the future Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Śląsk Wrocław, one of Polish soccer’s biggest clubs, could go into administration in the next few weeks if new funds are not found to save the ailing giant. The 2011/2012 Ekstraklasa champions have received no money from their billionaire co-owner Zygmunt Solorz-Żak since the start of 2012, a move which has left the club’s finances in a perilous state.

Mr Solorz-Żak, who has a personal fortune of over zł.10 billion according to the latest Forbes rich list, owns a 51 percent stake in the Lower Silesian giants (the remaining shares are owned by the city of Wrocław), but according to an agreement signed when he bought the club, Mr Solorz-Żak claims that he was only supposed to fund Śląsk until the end of 2011, after which time the club was expected to be self-sufficient.

The club’s finances were expected to be secured by a shopping mall that Mr Solorz-Żak had intended to build next to the city’s new state-of-the-art Municipal Stadium, which was built for last summer’s European soccer championships and where the team plays its home games. However the proposed shopping-center project never got off the ground and since then Mr Solorz-Żak has shown no interest in spending any money on the team.

Last year Śląsk Wrocław survived as the result of a zł.12 million loan form the local authorities, but this season the club owes some zł.4 million in wages to its players, according to Polish weekly Wprost, a debt that it looks increasingly unlikely to be able to pay. And the club’s off-field problems seem to have negatively affected their on-field performance this year, with Śląsk Wrocław currently in the middle of the league table, leaving them a lot to do if they are to secure back-to-back titles come the end of the season.

David Ingham