The intriguing phenomenon of Polish players rebuilding their careers in the Turkish Süper Lig

Images via @ibfk2014 and @GaziantepFK on Twitter

I wrote last summer about why Serie A continued to be a bit of a haven for Polish players looking to take the next step in their careers, and throughout the course of this season we’ve seen an interesting development in terms of Polish players grabbing the headlines in the Turkish top flight.

A couple of summers back, we had an influx of Polish players suddenly move to the Süper Lig: Krzysztof Piątek, Jakub Kałuziński and Sebastian Szymański all moved to Turkey on permanent deals in the summer of 2023, and Adam Buksa also moved on loan. In the nearly two years since, we’ve seen Kacper Kozłowski, Kamil Piątkowski and Przemysław Frankowski all also decide to ply their trade in the Süper Lig.

In this article I’d like to focus on all those players I’ve just name checked in the paragraph above, and how they’ve all worked on rebuilding their careers to varying degrees.

Starting with Piątek and Kozłowski, largely on the basis that they are having fantastic individual seasons. Admittedly Piątek has dipped again of late, struggling with form and fitness for the first time in a season which has still seen him score 30 goals across all competitions with Istanbul Basaksehir. Piątek has spoken again in the past few months about his desire to one day play in La Liga, and if he continues this goalscoring resurgence I don’t see why that couldn’t be a possibility.

Reports in the last few days have suggested concrete talks with Besiktas as well as a range of Saudi clubs, however my money would definitely be on a return to a Top 5 European league if Piątek is to move this summer.

Kozłowski is at the other end of his 20s to Piątek, and I have to say I did express my reservations about him moving to the Süper Lig last summer with Gaziantep. However, it has proven to be a shrewd move for Kozłowski who is now being linked with the biggest teams in Turkey such as Besiktas, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce.

Those last two bring us neatly to Sebastian Szymański and Przemysław Frankowski. Szymański has been one of Fenerbahce’s key performers for two seasons now, to the point when even in a club loaded with such big, talented names as he is Szymański is one of the players most often catching the eye. There has been a great deal of rumour both last summer and this past January linking Szymański with moves back to bigger European leagues such as Spain and Italy, but so far nothing concrete.

This January saw Przemysław Frankowski join Galatasaray on an initial loan which is to become permanent at the end of the season. Frankowski has not played every minute since his arrival in Istanbul, but he’s played a lot. So far the standout moments are a debut assist and a red card against Besiktas. Frankowski has only been in Turkey for less than three whole months, so it would be rash to make any definitive statements about his time there so far. However, looking at all the other Polish players who have moved and it augurs well that Frankowski should follow a similar path to rediscovering form and ability, which was starting to desert him a little bit both for Poland and RC Lens in the last 12 months.

Looking at the Antalyaspor two of Jakub Kałuziński and Adam Buksa, and it’s a pretty interesting combination. Buksa was only on loan, but it was a loan that after a disastrous move to the aforementioned Lens saw him score a bucketload of goals and secure a permanent move to Danish stalwarts Midtjylland, where Buksa has continued to score at a very reasonable rate and prove himself in Europe.

As for Kałuziński, he is still at Antalyaspor and in my opinion he is very much coming good on the potential we all knew he had before his acrimonious split with Lechia Gdańśk. For me it’s bordering on ridiculous that he does not get called up for senior international duty with Poland, save the one friendly appearance he had before the Euros last summer. 

Finally, Kamil Piątkowski also moved to Turkey this past transfer window, to Kasimpasa. It is yet another loan for the now 24 year-old Piątkowski, still contracted to Red Bull Salzburg, who he was turning out for quite regularly in the first half of this season. It’s been a season when he has cemented a starting spot in Michał Probierz’s back three for Poland, but at club level his strong individual performances have largely been undercut by an underperforming Salzburg and a couple of months at a mid-table Süper Lig team. Piątkowski has only got one clean sheet in 11 league games for Kasimpasa, although given the Süper Lig’s free-scoring nature this should not concern us too readily and he is at the very least playing week in, week out.

Generally speaking, the Turkish top flight has been a very watchable league for a long time now, and it’s nice that for those of us with a vested interest in Polish football that we can point to a handful of teams and you would have to say that all the players I’ve spoken about here are either the best in their side or very close to it this season or last. 

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