In August 1945, the Sports Club of the Port Reconstruction Bureau was founded in Gdańsk, but the name was changed in 1946 to Lechia, which has functioned to this day with a short break in 1950-55, when the name was Budowlani Gdańsk, as ordered by the authorities.
The White-Greens made their debut in the top division in 1949, but proved to be the weakest team in the 12-team league and were relegated from the competition. The team from Pomerania managed to make a longer appearance in the top division between 1955 and 1963, when, in 1955 to be precise, they even managed to reach the final of the Polish Cup, but lost there against Legia Warsaw. In the 1962/63 season Lechia was relegated from the lll Liga and did not return to it soon, as it only managed to do so in the 1984/85 season. Between the relegation and the comeback, the team managed to lift the first historic trophies for winning the Polish Cup in the 1982/83 season (while playing in the lll Liga at the time) and the Polish Super Cup in the 1983/84 season (while playing in the lll Liga).
Four seasons after promotion came another relegation from the league. The following years were not easy for the Gdańsk players, after many organisational troubles, which resulted in relegation all the way to the district league, Lechia Gdańsk have been playing continuously at Ekstraklasa level since the 2008/09 season. During this time, the team has also added to that by winning the Polish Cup (in 2019) and the Polish Super Cup (also in 2019). However, everything will change from next season, as the team from Gdańsk is already certain of relegation in this PKO BP Ekstraklasa season three queues before the end of the competition.
Also worth mentioning in all this is Lechia Gdańsk’s European history. One could say, for example, of the two-match series against Juventus. The meeting with the old lady was played in the 1983/84 season as part of the Cup Winners’ Cup and ended with a final score of 10-2 for the team from Italy. In Gdańsk, the result was 2-3 for Juve, while in Italy it was 7-0 also for Juventus. In addition, the White-Greens team also played their matches in the Intertoto Cup against Czech Sparta Prague, Denmark’s Lyngby BK and Switzerland’s Zurich. In the 2019 Europa League qualifiers, a two-match series was played against Denmark’s Broendby IF. On the other hand, this season’s Conference League qualifiers included matches against Macedonian Pandev Academy and Austrian Rapid Vienna. As previously mentioned, Lechia are bidding farewell to the Ekstraklasa competition after this season after many years.
The team at the moment is led by coach David Badie, who has failed to improve the performance of the team from Gdansk since the beginning of his work. Despite all this, this team is not to be underestimated, they still have a lot of individuals such as Łukasz Zwoliński, who is almost the bane of Mielec fans.
Szymon Markulis
