In late 2011,\u00a0 less than a year before the inauguration of the European Football Championship Euro 2012, organized by Poland and Ukraine, Polish media fiercely discussed the Israeli midfielder Maor Melikson who could play for the Polish national team.\u00a0It was possible because his mother, Rivka, was born in Legnica and\u00a0left Poland with her family\u00a0as a\u00a0young girl.<\/p>\n
After a transfer from Hapoel\u00a0Beer Sheva in January 2011,\u00a0this excellent footballer\u00a0became a favorite of fans and the undisputed star of Wis\u0142a Krak\u00f3w- football club, after scoring the only and victorious goal in the derby match against Cracovia\u00a0on May 15, 2011. Winning that match over the eternal rival, known in the football world in Poland as the holy war, sealed the\u00a013th and the last so far title of the Polish champion for Wis\u0142a Krak\u00f3w.\u00a0Ultimately, Maor Melikson did not play in the Polish national team, but he played 26 times in international matches for\u00a0the Israeli national team, in which he scored 3 goals.<\/p>\n
Apart from football experts, few people know that in the period before World War II, many Jewish footballers played in the Polish league as well as in the national team of Poland.\u00a0Jewish clubs – Jutrzenka Krak\u00f3w in 1927 and Hasmonea Lw\u00f3w in 1927-1928 also played in the Polish first football league (the highest league).<\/p>\n
The collocation \u201choly war\u201d was coined for the derby match of Krakow\u2019s Cracovia and Wis\u0142a teams by the player of Cracovia- Ludwik Gintel, when in the dressing room before the match played in 1924 he shouted to his friends\u00a0“Well, let’s go to this holy war”.\u00a0Interestingly, even earlier in Krakow, this term was used to describe a competition between two Krak\u00f3w\u2019s Jewish clubs, Makabi and Jutrzenka.\u00a0Before moving to Cracovia, the aforementioned Gintel was a junior player of the latter club.<\/p>\n
Jutrzenka and Makabi in the 1920s played an important role in Polish football.\u00a0In the regional A class in Krakow, only Wis\u0142a and Cracovia could keep up with them.\u00a0Ludwik Gintel in the colors of Cracovia became the top scorer of the Polish league in 1928 after scoring 28 goals, and he played 328 games for the club, initially playing as a striker and later as a defender.\u00a0At that time, he played for the Polish national team, participating in a total of 12 matches between the years 1921 to 1925.\u00a0He appeared in the first historic match between the national team and Hungary in Budapest on December 18, 1921. He played with the same opponent on May 14, 1922 in Krakow, that match ended in a 0:3 defeat. In that game, when the ball slipped on his shoe and entered the gate, Ludwik Gintel became the first scorer of own goal in the history of the Polish national team.<\/p>\n
Few people are also aware of the fact that the first historic goal for the Polish national team was scored by J\u00f3zef Klotz in the match against Sweden played on May 28, 1922 in Stockholm.\u00a0It was the third performance of the Polish representation in history.\u00a0The match ended with the score 2: 1 for Poland.<\/p>\n
J\u00f3zef Klotz was born on January 2, 1900 in Krak\u00f3w.\u00a0He was the son of a Jewish shoemaker.\u00a0In 1918, he volunteered for the Polish Army, participating in the war against Soviet Russia (1919-1921).\u00a0He was demobilized in November 1920. During his football career, he represented the two clubs of the aforementioned Jutrzenka Krak\u00f3w (1910-1925)\u00a0and Makabi Warszawa.\u00a0With 185 cm, he was a stout defender which at that time was not a common height.\u00a0He played two matches for the Polish national team – the first mentioned before, the 3-0 loss against Hungary in May 1922, and the second, which allowed him to enter the history of Polish football for good.\u00a0The sport newspaper \u201cPrzegl\u0105d Sportowy\u201d reported: \u201cIn the 27th minute, Szperling ends the run to the center.\u00a0Hemming not attacked by anyone unnecessarily slaps the ball with his hand: penalty.\u00a0Who should be entrusted with the role of an executor?<\/p>\n
Klotz was the only player in his team to beat penalties with good results, and the captain entrusts him to do it.\u00a0Klotz calmly shoots the ball in the left corner under the crossbar without any running.\u00a0The goalkeeper didn’t even move.\u00a0J\u00f3zef Klotz’s performance was positively assessed; apart from scoring a goal, he was a real mainstay of the defense of the Polish national team.<\/p>\n
Despite a good performance, J\u00f3zef Klotz did not play again for the Polish national team.\u00a0Perhaps the reason for this was that he played in Jutrzenka, which fell from the first league to the then regional A-class, like Makabi Warsaw, and both clubs did not participate in the struggle for the Polish championship later.<\/p>\n
After the German attack on Poland in September 1939, Warsaw was incorporated into the German General Government administered by the German occupiers. German occupation authorities decided to create a ghetto in Warsaw in 1940 for the Jewish population.\u00a0Among them was J\u00f3zef Klotz, who was probably shot by the Germans in one of the mass executions in 1941. The fate of his Polish wife, with whom he married in W\u0142oc\u0142awek in 1925, and their daughter are unknown.<\/p>\n
After several decades, on June 10, 2019, before the Poland-Israel match in the qualifying rounds of the European Championship, J\u00f3zef Klotz’s nephew Yoav Dekel received the Polish national team jersey with the name of his uncle and opened a special exhibition dedicated to him. The celebrations were also attended by the well-known coach Avram Grant, who recently expressed his interest in leading the Polish national team after former coach Paulo Sousa resigned.<\/p>\n
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In late 2011,\u00a0 less than a year before the inauguration of the European Football Championship Euro 2012, organized by Poland and Ukraine, Polish media fiercely discussed the Israeli midfielder Maor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n