Remembering Jacek Magiera

Image via @pzpn_pl on Twitter

I was initially going to write an article this week following up on what’s next for Poland after their failure to qualify for the World Cup, but all that went out the window with the sad news of Jacek Magiera’s sudden passing last week. 

As someone’s who only been following Polish football with extreme interest in the last six or seven years, I can’t profess to have too much or really any knowledge of Magiera as a player, beyond what I’m aware of having seen old clips of him playing for Legia Warszawa in the early 2000s. Prior to my passion for Polish football, I wasn’t even aware of him when he managed Legia, even if I have gone back and rewatched those famous Champions League games in 2016. 

I first became aware of Magiera around the time he took charge of Poland’s U-20s when they hosted the U-20 World Cup in 2019, and then his time managing Śląsk Wrocław from 2021 to 2022, and especially his rehiring just over a year later. 

It is the 2023-24 Ekstraklasa season for which I mostly remember Magiera, his Śląsk team managing to finish as runners-up and having managed to play some really entertaining football. 

Like many, it was a pleasant sight to see him come on board as part of Jan Urban’s Poland, and I’m of the opinion that Magiera was one of many factors that made the mood around the national team, both for players and fans, much better than it had been for the months prior. 

It was therefore very sad and shocking news to read of Magiera’s passing, especially given his age and how prominent he had been just two weeks ago during the last international break. 

I apologise if this comes across as especially earnest, but I found the most interesting part of the often very trite Lączy Nas Piłka vlogs to be when Magiera was speaking about the book “Szczęście czy fart?”, the book he bought and handed out as a gift to colleagues and younger players. I was so moved by hearing him speak about this book in such terms that I have been searching for a copy since. 

It’s hard to know what to write when something like this occurs in the modern world, especially as football supporters. We enjoy something of a parasocial relationship with these figures as we do with many other well-known people in the public eye, but because of the emotions sport provides we feel very affected by their passing, especially when it is as unexpected as this. 

Whilst the tone of this article is quite different from what I would normally post on this website, I felt it would only be appropriate to try and pay tribute, however small, to Magiera. In the time I’ve been invested in Polish football he always came across as a humble and pleasant fixture of the sport, and it is apparent from the reaction over the last week that this was very much the case.