An amateur in PZPN. Searching for a selector looks ridiculous

Steven Gerrard, Paulo Bento, Herve Renard and Vladimir Petković are the coaches contacted by Cezary Kulesza in search of Czesław Michniewicz’s successor. It is difficult to find many common features in them to draw a portrait of a coach who would be the ideal president of the Polish Football Association. Everyone is from a different parish – at a different stage of their career, in a different contractual situation. Each of them has different advantages and achievements, which only intensifies the impression that we are dealing with a round-up, and not a conscious choice based on clear guidelines.

It is not known what kind of coach Kulesza wants – about what experience, temperament, working methods or preferences regarding the style of play. The only criterion – looking at the differences between the main candidates – seems to be the whim of the CEO, who intends to make the decision himself. Kulesza consults in a very small group. He does not reveal his preferences, he does not want to talk about details. If he talks to journalists, he confuses the trail, giving absurd names of Polish coaches that are supposedly on his mind: Probierz, Mamrot, Bartoszek and Stokowiec. His statements terrify the fans, intensify the impression of chaos and amateurism. It is true that the journalists quickly explained that this was a trick and it is not worth getting attached to these names, because Czesław Michniewicz’s successor will almost certainly be from abroad, but it is harder to explain why the president dropped these names at all, since he knew perfectly well that they were options at least highly reserved.

However, this is a smaller, rather image-related problem. Worse, neither the president nor sports director Marcin Dorna, nor the general secretary and Kulesza’s closest associate Łukasz Wachowski, do not want to present the criteria according to which the new selector is selected. They do not want to say what is less and what is more important when choosing. Jakub Kwiatkowski, spokesman for PZPN, confirms in a short conversation with Sport.pl that none of the decision-makers working in the federation will comment on this matter.

Belgium showed how a modern federation is looking for a coach

The Belgians, who also parted ways with the coach after the World Cup and are looking for a new one, have simply written who they want to hire.

The new national team manager should be ambitious and have the necessary international experience at the highest level, tactical football knowledge and insights, as well as the right personal skills. He should be a serial winner with experience managing top players and know how to focus on building a cohesive group and how to integrate young players. We are looking for a tactical expert who supports his choices with data, technology and objective parameters and uses sports knowledge and federation structure

– we read in the official letter, resembling a job advertisement. It is not very detailed or revealing. But the Belgians do not address these words to candidates from all over the world, hoping to flood them with offers, but to their fans and the entire football environment to clearly indicate the direction of the search. They show with this statement that they know exactly who they want to find. They focus on transparency, mark priorities. With this statement, they say what is important in their football and allow them to account for this decision. The Belgians have created a model and they are looking for a perfect candidate for this model, because this is how modern federations work – methodically, even corporately. If it was a matter of choosing a car, they’d know they were looking for a red five-door off-roader.

Meanwhile, Poles look like those who would go from second-hand shop to second-hand shop and look at passenger cars and minibuses, saying only: “This one is quite nice. Maybe we’ll buy it.” Maybe even in the end they will hit and choose correctly, and the new selector will prove himself and work for more than a year. But it will still be hard to believe that Kulesza had a clear vision of where the national team should go – how to play and what to represent.

After the recent scandals, PZPN needs transparency and discussion on competences

Renard has a contract with Saudi Arabia, Gerrard and Petkovic still receive salaries from the clubs they were released from, and Bento is completely free. Gerrard has no selection experience, the other three have already worked in this role. Petkovic was last in charge of Bordeaux, has been out of work for almost a year, and Renard and Bento were at the World Cup in Qatar. They improved their position on the market during the championship, Gerrard in Poland would have to rebuild it after disastrous results and dismissal from Aston Villa. There, they accused him of a lack of style and genderless playing, and our staff just needs to be made more attractive after the pragmatic Michniewicz. The other three have a reputation for being attack-oriented, though they go about it in different ways.

Renard’s teams are most often based on good physical preparation, rely on pressing, take the initiative against weaker teams and want to attack with many players, and on better ones they can find a different way and surprise – like Zambia, which won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2012. Petković is extremely solid, he also thinks offensively, and the results he achieved with the Swiss are impressive: getting out of the group at Euro 2016 and the World Cup in Russia, as well as a quarter-final at the last Euro. Bento, in turn, has the advantage over them that he has already managed a great star in the national team – Cristiano Ronaldo at the peak of his form. Petković and Renard with a player like Lewandowski – extremely demanding for coaches – have not yet met. And it is the Polish captain who must ultimately be convinced of the selector, which we have written about in more detail .

To be clear – they are very solid candidates for selectors. The most doubts are with Gerrard, because he has the least experience, and the assistants he relied on at Rangers FC and Aston Villa are already working on their own. But persuading someone from the trio of Bento, Petković and Renard to Poland would be a success for Kulesza – the problem is that the way it is done once again does not add seriousness to the federation. One gets the impression that the president chooses on the nose. After recent weeks marked by mishaps and scandals, he is looking for a name that will convince everyone, not a selector who will meet the most key criteria for him. It is not even known what these criteria are and whether they were established before the search began. And yet it is transparency and discussion on the competences of PZPN that is needed the most after the bonus scandal and controversy related to the employment of the “Grucha” bodyguard.