The Remarkable Rise & Fall Of Legia Warsaw

Polish Ekstraklasa champions in seven out of the last nine seasons and regulars in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League, Legia Warsaw are Poland's most notorious and successful club.

However, this season, the historic military team is languishing down at the foot of the Ekstraklasa table, threatened with relegation, and few people outside of Poland can understand their plight.

So in this documentary, HITC Sevens takes a deep dive into what has gone wrong at Legia Warszawa, their unique set of problems, and whether their current demise is likely to be terminal.

[yisraelbrooke]

Can you please make a documentary about "Royale Union Saint-Gilloise"? They're one of the most successful teams from Belgium (historically) and have been out of the Belgium top division for 48 years! But the reason I am asking this is because they are currently in first place in Belgiums top division (by 7 points), after only being promoted this year!
I think it would be interesting!

[leolo]

This kind of reminds me of my club, Young Boys, but in a more extreme way. We had great European success this season with a UCL-qualification, where we then even beat Man Utd at home, but a slow start to the season amongst a bad injury crisis, where our keeper got injured too. After winning the league last season with a 30+ points gap we now only sit in 3rd with 8 points less than the leaders despite not playing that badly. More strange is the fact that both teams, Legia and Young Boys have the same main sponsor in Plus 500. Same as Atletico Madrid, who are also struggling in the league after their title win last season… Video idea: The Plus-500 conspiracy

[wojteksocha]

Before being Legia manager, Michniewicz was Poland's u-21 team manager and he had a really good appearance on u-21 euro with Poland. He's arrival at Legia was described many times like this: "Mioduski finally appointed manager that is a real manager, not former Legia player or someone totally random". Despite his departure, many fans in Poland thinks that he wasn't the case of the problem. Everyone in Poland believes that Mioduski and his co-workers are responsible for majority of the catastrophy. Recently he had 2 interviews with one on the Legia's official website and one with Legia's fans. In both cases he absolutely compromised himself. For instance he said that Legia's sporting director is an introvert and he never answer any calls or he said that he loves managers that are very decisive and confident about their opinion as long as they agree with him. There's no stability for any manager.

[Fan_Lidla]

As a polish fan of football, I am really thankfull for promoting our football in the world. I think more recognition for our team will much help to improve the league.

[wilksy]

I lived in Warsaw for a couple of years. Absolutely loved the city and went to see Legia. Their fans are absolutely bonkers and had great times there too especially listening to Sen o Warszawie.

[maciejrokita]

Wow, Alfie - thank you for a commendable job with the research and analysis! You've hit all the major points Polish experts and fans had been bringing up for quite some time and then some! Thanks to your awesome videos on Wisla and Legia I'm pretty sure you'll soon be experiencing a fairly decent spike in viewers from Poland since you've more than earned it. Fingers crossed and, if you fancy doing so, would you keep us posted about those numbers of viewers by country, as you've done before?

[ellastico]

Really happy to see a visual representation of an Estonian team in the video. As some background info, Bartosz Kapustka, who I assume was supposed to be one of Legia's key players, got injured while celebrating a goal against Estonian side Flora. That should be the best example of Legia's "luck" this season. He didn't do anything crazy, just jumped and landed on a straight leg, injuring his knee.

[pirotessc]

Please not mention Robert Lewandowski connected to Legia Warsaw, in short he had injury there at young age, they completly crossed him out of football (they didn't think he can comeback from that injury). He needed to rebuild himself in Znicz Pruszków and against all the odds come back from injury and well you can see now where he got by his hard work...

[jakubgnat]

Thank you for this Christmas gift. I was hoping you may do a video about Legia. Thankfully i wasn't mistaken. As a Legia fan It is nice to hear from someone from outside Poland to look what the hell is going on in the club. Warm greetings and Merry Christmas.

[slusarz]

As a Pole I would say that this video does a really good job at explaining Legia's crisis. The only things I would point out are small nitpicks but Emreli is acutally not Russian, he is from Azerbaijan, and I don't really think that Michniewicz was all that unliked by Legia's fans (although I can't really say for sure, cuz like most of the fans of the Polish league I hate Legia with the bottom of my heart, and local team I support (Jagiellonia Białystok) is one of Legia's biggest rivals, mainly because of their xenophobic tendecies to eastern Poles, and hatred of arogant people from capital here in eastern Poland) last season he was higly praised at often called one of the best Polish managers in recent years, but I have to agree that his style of football was mostly primitive and focused on crosses on their really big striker, Tomáš Pekhart. Overall, great video and I really hope that Legia will get relegated, everyone outside of Warsaw hates them.

[sagbon]

I come from Warsaw and am a fan of Legia. I left the Polish capital in 2017 to study abroad. That season, Legia had players like Guilherme and Michał Kucharczyk, played in the Champions League group stage and Europa League Round of 32 (I watched the home leg against Ajax in the stadium) and won the Ekstraklasa on the final match day. I more or less disconnected from football once I left and what little football I watched was either international or La Liga (I live in Spain). I recently decided to follow Legia again because they barely posted on social media and most of their posts revolved around Mahir Emreli, their star player from Azerbaijan. I checked the league table and expected to see Legia within the top spots. Instead, I saw some clubs I remembered as being weaker and some clubs I had never heard of. I thought Legia would be in the middle. Nope. Legia was in the relegation zone! I felt like I had woken up from a bad dream. I thought "HITC Sevens has some new homework to do!" I am still a fan of Legia and Ł3. Thank you for this video!

[iCheZee]

Went to Warsaw back in October, around the time they played Napoli. Beautiful city.

[jan_jh]

Yay, thanks for doing a video on Legia. As a Legia fan, I am really sad about what’s happening right now, and you making a video about my favourite club is a great Christmas gift

[TheKingOfSting]

I went to watch a Legia home game in 2016, I’ve watched football all over Europe and it was by far the best atmosphere I’ve ever experienced.

[rowerlimanowski]

As a Pole, I'm delighted that you made a video about Poland. Also a Lech Poznań fan, the current Ekstraklasa season has been great for us, sincer we are top and our biggest rivals 2nd to bottom. Great video BTW

[danielmurphy]

Legia qualified for the Champions League groupstage by beating Irish champions Dundalk in the playoff match back in 2016/2017, which is the closest an Irish club has ever come to the Champions league groupstages.

Very interesting to find out about Legia’s struggles this season considering Dundalk too had an unbeliveably bad season this year. Some coincidence.

[vaporterra]

Even though I usually try my best to follow the major European leagues that produce clubs that compete in the major European competitions, I had no idea about Legit Warsaw so thank you for this video!

[jan_jh]

Mahir Emreli is Azerbeijani
Also is polish, in a word like “Plock” the “ck” is pronounced as “tsk”

[esior]

What a great Christmas gift, a short documentary from Alfie about a club from Poland. Merry Christmas Alfie!

[iorn]

as a Widzew Lodz fans, I find it kind of funny how they're in the relegation zone! I honestly wanted to see the rivalry between these 2 again! Widzew Lodz have been through a lot too, they went so far down that they managed to get from the top flight to the 4th divison of Poland. Now Widzew are on the verge of getting back to the top of Polish football. I feel like Legia Warsaw will go through the same story as we did.