Sunday, April 05, 2026
A Pole in Pittsburgh, Part 2
Like his close contemporary Andras Torocsik, Stanislaw Terlecki showed impressive determination in regaining his best form after what might have been a career-ending injury. Back in the national team for the 1980 Nations Cup qualifiers, he played perhaps the best game of his life in September 1979, ruling the field and scoring a decisive brace against Switzerland in Lausanne. Poland failed to make it through a very tough qualifying group - they were pipped at the post by the Dutch, as indeed they had been in 1976 - but there was every reason for confidence ahead of the 1982 World Cup.
Again, Terlecki would not be there. And this time it was not fitness but politics which prevented his attendance.
The Okecie airport incident, known as the "Okecie Affair" in Poland, was an event with enormous ramifications. It was perhaps the most serious confrontation between footballers and the authorities that ever occurred behind the old Iron Curtain; the seeds of the rebellion which began with the famous Polish Solidarity movement sprouted with a vengeance on that late November morning in 1980.
The beginning of the story was a tawdry one. The Polish squad was assembled for a trip to Italy, prior to a World Cup qualifier in Malta. The first-choice goalkeeper Josef Mlynarczyk - later a European Cup winner with Porto - had been out on the town with a journalist the night before, and night turned into morning. When the time came for the team to head to the airport, Mlynarczyk was, well, not functioning terribly well. Polish officials ordered the indisposed keeper to stay behind; his team-mates, however, had other ideas.
The incident itself was relatively trivial, but it served as a touchpaper in the midst of a number of frustrations, ranging from the perennial issue of proper remuneration to more mundane concerns (apparently one of the reasons Mlynarczyk escaped for the evening was that the hotel food was inedible).
Terlecki, the perpetual rebel, was immediately in his element. He promptly drove Mlynarczyk to the airport in his own car, and assumed the leading role in the subsequent confrontation with the Polish officials, which almost turned physical. Not content with stopping there, the young winger also began harassing the reporters covering the team's departure, whose morning had suddenly become a little more interesting. Team-mates later complained that the incident would never have become a scandal of such proportions had Terlecki not indulged in such antics.
In the event, the Polish coach Ryszard Kulesza was eventually persuaded to relent and restore Mlynarczyk to the squad. The establishment press, however, mercilessly attacked the players, and Kulesza found himself under intense pressure. To make matters even worse, Terlecki had organised a meeting in Italy with the stridently anti-communist Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla in a small Polish town and a hero to Polish Catholics. This was too much for the Polish authorities, and Terlecki and Mlynarczyk, along with Zbigniew Boniek and the veteran defender Wladyslaw Zmuda, were banned from the team for a year. To cap off a perfect trip, the eventual qualifier in Malta was abandoned after locals began throwing stones at the Polish team. (FIFA eventually awarded the match to Poland, who were 2-0 up at the time.)
Kulesza resigned in protest, and it was left to his successor, Antoni Piechniczek, to intercede with the authorities for the lifting of the bans on the "Gang of Four". Mlynarczyk, Boniek and Zmuda were all eventually restored to the side after expressing some suitable remorse, and all made notable contributions to Poland's third-place finish at the 1982 World Cup. But Terlecki was a different matter. He had been a thorn in the commissars' side for too long already. He had earned their ire on a number of previous occasions, firstly with his unapproved transfer from the military-aligned Gwardia Warsaw club to Lodz when he was still a teenager, and later with some barbed comments when he was called in to assist with radio commentary on the 1978 World Cup.
Fired from his club LKS Lodz as well at the start of 1981 after joining in student strikes in the city, Terlecki decided it was time for a new start in football. And where else would a fiery anti-communist go but to the United States of America?
Stay tuned for Part 3.
