Since winter, Legia has been groping in the dark. They wasted half a year. "It would be better if they fired us"

The summary of this was the loan of Vladan Kovacevic, about whom Feio admitted that he simply picked up the phone, called him and a few days later the goalkeeper was already in Legia. He acted quickly.

This is how Kovacevic's transfer actually looked. This is not the kind of message that should have come from the club, because it didn't do Legia any good PR. But was it? Goncalo told the truth.

In the winter, Legia dug in with a striker. You searched and searched. There were names like Pittas. He was rejected. Finally, Legia bought Szkurin from Stal Mielec and at such a time that they couldn't register him for the Conference League. Mixed with confusion.

The transfer committee has led to the point where there is no one who can make an individual decision. Scouting proposals have been consistently rejected.

In the media only the names of Legia's would-be strikers changed.

I was impressed by how quickly journalists got to these names. There was a lot of pressure to bring these nine players to the club. In the end, they saved themselves by transferring Shkurin. It wasn't good for the club or even for Ilya. He's not a bad player and he can give Legia something in the future. But he got here at a very difficult time. I watched the matches and saw his frustration because he wasn't scoring goals.

I had the impression that in some matches he ran around with a twenty-kilo backpack.

I felt sorry for him that he couldn't make the leap in greater comfort. Going from being a striker at Stal Mielec to being Legia's first striker is a huge leap, if only in terms of bearing the pressure and expectations of the fans.

Was Vahan Biczakhchyan's transfer treated as a promotion? The pursuit is shaky, so we'll get him out.

I am not able to answer this question.

You worked in scouting.

There is no player from Ekstraklasa that we do not know, but it was the decision of the transfer committee. Perhaps an opportunity to strengthen our wings, because after changing the formation it turned out that we have big gaps there in terms of competition. And without competition you have no quality. I am not saying that any of our players did not have it. You just cannot stay on the wings with Chodyna, Luqinhas and young players. When playing for the highest goals, the competition has to be bigger. Apparently the transfer committee decided that Biczachczyan will provide it.

Last season, Legia spent around seven million euros on transfers. The results? Fifth place in the league.

The amount you mentioned, for Polish conditions, may indeed be impressive. Let's just point out that a large part of it was spent in the winter and let's not forget that the players acquired in the summer also played a part in our journey in European cups, which brought the club huge money.

Wouldn't you buy Vinagre?

We didn't have to buy it at that point. We could have waited.

Otherwise you wouldn't have unblocked Kovacevic's loan.

Every decision has certain consequences. We could have bought Vinagre in May. At the moment when, for example, we knew there was an offer for him or we had achieved such a result that we could definitely afford him. Loaning Kovacevic meant that we had to decide what to do with Ruben in the winter.

We bought him, we paid for Ilya. Plus or minus it turns out – because I'm not saying that the amounts in the media are true – that half of that money was spent in the winter. In a window in which we operated in a situation that was different from normal. That's when we decided to give away everything we have in the number nine position, everything we spent on, and go into further spending. That's not the way to achieve something in football.

"The character of Fredi Bobić is shrouded in mystery"

And what did the scouting department's work look like in the spring? Until April, you worked without a sports director.

It's not easy to work in such circumstances. We were really working without knowing what we were preparing for. We didn't know who we were doing this job for. You don't know if there will be a coach...

There is no sports director.

There is no director and it is not known who will be, and the coach is in conflict with the scouting director. It was a job in the style of: be ready for anything. It came to this, at the very end, honestly, that you work for your own ambitions and the coat of arms. Each of us came to work and wanted to do as much as possible for Legia. It was not easy because the end of the season was approaching. And if you want to be prepared for the window, then you start making moves earlier. The sports director, scouting director or people from the sports department do not start work in June. Work for the window starts a few, and in top clubs, a dozen or so months earlier.

Did the arrival of Michał Żewłakow change anything? Did you already feel some direction, or did the new sports director need time to implement?

Michał outlined for us the positions we would be looking for players for. That was all. For us it was more of a clarification in the style of: "Okay, so the ranking in these positions for this window will be a bit less important. But this one could be key for us."

At a meeting with us, the journalists, he announced that he would be looking for two wingers and a striker.

Michał entered the club at a difficult time. He wasn't prepared, because he couldn't be. Everything happened dynamically. Sometimes it seemed to me that in the rush of everything that was pouring down on him every day, he could feel overwhelmed. A fan evaluates a sports director by transfers and, in the end, by sports success. Today, however, the sports director of Legia is a member of the club's board. A person who has a lot of paperwork to fill out, a lot of meetings and formalities. A million responsibilities. Sometimes I have the impression that it's too much, which is why he can't focus one hundred percent on the sport, the training process and the training staff. On what's most important in this job.

Analyzing Żewłakow's work, he had his best time in Bogusław Leśnodorski's Legia, where he was given a lot of freedom. He had a more difficult time in Zagłębie Lubin, where he was consumed by formalities. Isn't there such a threat to the way he works in today's Legia that corporate Legia won't use his skills as everyone expects?

Legia's operating model is truly corporate. Anyone who is not prepared to function in such a model will not find it easy.

Zhevlakov is there?

It may be difficult for him to operate in such a corporate model.

• See also: Legia wants to fix itself. Michał Żewłakow shows the direction

What scouting work is Legia basing on in this transfer window? Have you provided the rankings you've created? Are new people entering the sports department and doing things their own way?

We worked with Michał for a month, a month and a half, and we talked about transfer ideas on an ongoing basis. We talked to agents based on what we had agreed with him. No one acted on their own.

I have no idea what direction the new Legia will go. The issues are in its hands. Norbert Misiak has stayed in the scouting department. I know his diligence, work ethic. I know that he will try to pass on the good things from our work. Because after all, it's a waste of this work. Michał is in the club, who worked with us, Norbert has stayed, who has worked in the scouting department for a long time. If someone wants to use this, they will be able to do so.

Has the entry of Fredi Bobić, who is to be responsible for scouting in Legia, affected your work?

Fredi Bobić is a mystery to me. I learned from the media that he was supposed to be responsible for scouting, even though I was in scouting. All I know about him is that he was a very good footballer and worked in good clubs as a director.

What kind of boss was he?

Unfortunately, I am not able to answer this question.

You haven't met him?

Fred Bobić and I had one meeting. It was about what we should do. Differently. Maybe not even about what we should do. I would say that Fredi accompanied Michał to our meeting with him. We talked about reinforcements and created a hierarchy of players we wanted to acquire in the summer. Fredi was at that meeting. Never we didn't have a separate meeting so he could get to know us. I doubt he knows the name and surname of anyone who left that scouting. We didn't even get to know each other in terms of any working activities.

Piotr Włodarczyk watched Maxi Oyedele in the Polish youth squads

Who is responsible for the transfer of Ruben Vinagre?

In football you do everything together.

Obviously. And if we were to point out one person?

The Ruben topic reached Legia in two ways. Through Goncalo and the coaching staff, as well as the scouting department. Basically, at the same time, one agent sent information about the possibility of loaning Ruben to the staff, and the other to Radek Mozyrka. I appreciate the coaches' involvement in his transfer, but it's not like we didn't know Ruben. That suddenly someone threw out his name and it was: "Vinagre? Who's that?" No, it didn't work that way.

How so?

I don't like taking credit for things - I did this, you did that. The key to this job is that we make every transfer as a team. Assigning that moves that are assessed positively by the public are the coach's and that negative moves are the responsibility of the scouting and sports department is simply weak.

We did it together. But if that's what you're asking, I can admit that Goncalo did a great job of getting Ruben to come.

He convinced him.

He convinced, led the conversation, because that's normal. That's how it should look like and that's how we acted with every player we brought in.

What was the role of Scouting?

We sat down to analyze, we made a shortlist for his position. There were three players on it, we put Ruben first. We were also interested in other players. But it was precisely this consistency that we and the staff were convinced that Ruben was number one and the priority to bring in. Both did a good job in the context of him coming to Legia. It was a specific analysis. We verified him sportingly and non-sportingly, prepared reports. Many wondered what was wrong with this player, that with such a past he came to Legia. We presented specific arguments why, in our opinion, Ruben is number one in the ranking and will give us a lot of quality.

How did you track down the players? How did they end up in Legia scouts' notebooks?

Players come in different ways. One option is traditional scouting. A scout is at a match, and we also had foreign scouts. Each of them kept rankings and reported players from their leagues on an ongoing basis, because last season we were divided into leagues that we watched on an ongoing basis. Of course, we went to observe specific players live.

Radek Mozyrko kept various lists of players who met the criteria we had set. We verified them together and placed them in rankings of given positions. There was a lot of work involved. Today, it is very difficult for someone to recommend a player to Legia who is not in the database and who is not known to any of the scouts or employees of the sports department. We had such an advanced scouting network that we knew most of the players in Europe who were realistically worth doing for us. We also kept a database of those who are not realistic today, but may be in some time.

• Here are the best debutants in Ekstraklasa. Two Legia players on the list

How did Maxi Oyedele end up in Legia? A transfer of an unconventional player who is now in the Polish national team. How did you come across him? How did you convince him to transfer?

I will repeat again that we made this transfer together. We lost Juergen Elitim for half a year and we were looking for a central midfielder. We had Maxi in our database. In my ranking of central midfielders he was with the comment "a player with great potential for development", and Piotrek Włodarczyk watched him in the Polish youth teams. And he played a big part in the transfer. I remember him coming into the office and saying that he had seen him in the squad and that he could be taken to Legia. We talked about him in the sports department and each of us was convinced that it was a valuable move for the future.

What convinced you?

We looked at the potential of the young players. Let's assume that we could bring a player to Legia who would be of quality today. He would come from a place where he played, maintained a high level for a very long time, but he is 31 years old. He would give us one and a half seasons and leave for free or end his career. In the ranking, there could be a player higher than him who could be a supplement or a player to compete with at the moment. But we took into account that with this potential he could ultimately give us more. Maxi was someone like that. We knew that in the face of Juergen's injury he could be a supplement, but ultimately his potential is huge. For such a young player without any experience at the senior level, he has such character and footballing traits that midfielders aged 28-30, i.e. players who are already developed and experienced, often do not have.

Today, Legia probably realizes that they won't keep this player for long. He can leave for six million euros, but almost half of that will go to Manchester United.

I saw that when the media reported rumors – regardless of whether they were true – about Maxi's release fee, where a percentage was to go to Manchester United, suddenly there was a perception: "Oh no, who signed such a contract?" These are normal contract provisions used by big clubs. There is no chance of taking a player trained at Manchester United, for someone to just give him away and say: "Okay, take him for free and do whatever you want with him."

Legia doesn't have a transfer budget that would allow them to buy Maxi from United. Besides, the prevailing comments at the time were how we can take a player who bounced back from the fifth English league. Can you imagine the fans' reaction if they read that we paid three million euros for such a player?

Mateusz Mazur highlights Ryoya Morishita's role in Legia

Did the Legia you are building lack individuality? Players who could win a match on their own? I look at Lech. They are not doing well in the match against Legia in Warsaw. There is Gholizadeh, he finds his place and scores the winning goal. There was also Sousa, Ishak, he helped Walemark many times. Jagiellonia has Imaz and Pululu. Pogoń has Grosicki and Koulouris. Did Legia not lack such a player? Such players?

I do not agree that Legia lacks individuality.

It is in Lech that there is the most individual quality today.

And don't you have the impression that these Lech players, whose quality we are talking about, needed a lot of time to become like that.

Gholizadeh and Sousa – yes.

Why don't we say that Morishita was a similar player in Legia this season? Let's switch roles for one question. What was missing in Morishita that would make you describe him as a star of the team and a character like Sousa or Gholizadeh in Lech?

He didn't win anything in the league. With Legia he finished a disappointing fifth. But individually he was Legia's best player this season for me with double the number of goals and assists.

I'll throw in another name right away - Ruben Vinagre. Yes, he got injured later, he lacked consistency. But when we signed him and threw him into the team, wasn't he a star of the Ekstraklasa and our team?

In autumn, yes.

We decided that we wanted to have a fairly even team. However, I completely disagree that Legia did not have characters capable of providing quality. Didn't Morishita give us victory in the Polish Cup final? We played a good match as a team, but didn't "Mori" make a difference then? Thanks to this, Legia has a trophy and will play in European cups. So why aren't we talking about Morishita, but about Sousa or Gholizadeh? I have the feeling that Gholizadeh is at times the same player as in the match in Warsaw. He is invisible, but he scores one goal and ensures victory. And we say that he has quality.

That's what it's all about.

It is true that he has a lot of quality. But why don't we say about Morishita that he did the same in the Polish Cup? Today we want to be very critical of Legia.

Because he doesn't win titles.

Lech also didn't win in recent seasons. They won now.

And he was criticized too. Gholizadeh was criticized, and the Lech authorities were slammed for this transfer.

See how much the rating can change. We talk about Lech's individual players, we call these players stars, and a year earlier they were failures. Legia did not win the championship, so we do not talk much about the fact that Morishita has a lot of quality and is the star of the team. And he is not the only one. There is Elitim, Wszołek, there is Gual with his numbers, Vinagre, or Oyedele. Many players also helped us achieve success individually, for example in European cups.

In general, what we are talking about is related to what we need to build regular clubs: patience, trust and stability. Things that are practically absent in Polish football.

Only in Polish?

I agree that we would be attacking Poland if we went with the narrative that it only happens in our country. However, I have the impression that we are particularly impatient. Look at how often we change coaches in clubs. We have something that we would like to do everything right away. We are not patient, we do not want to wait for results and maintain regularity. Śląsk fights for the championship, and then falls. Jagiellonia won the championship, now they will play in the cups, but fought to advance to them until the last round. Lech had a good season, they won the championship. And do you remember the previous one?

Unsuccessful with fifth place in the end.

Raków was the champion earlier, and finished the following season in seventh place. See, there is no consistency in any Polish club. Do you have a sure thing about which you will say that every year will be the champion, vice-champion? In the new season, I see the fight for the podium as follows: Legia, Lech, Raków, Jagiellonia, Pogoń, Widzew, I'm adding Motor, Górnik, maybe Cracovia.

I counted nine teams

And someone else could make a surprise. I don't know if GKS Katowice won't be such a team in the new season. Or Termalica? We've reached a point where you don't have one team that is the strongest every season.

Legia fans rejoiced after three scouts were fired

What was your separation from Legia like?

Jacek Zieliński brought me to the club. In the winter I wondered what my future at Legia might look like. I wondered if it wouldn't be worth meeting someone, talking: "Listen, Jacek is no longer the director, and I'm from him. How do you see my future?"

Only the meeting with president Herra took place in a good atmosphere. We drew similar conclusions about how we work and in which direction we should go. A new sports director came to the club. Michał came into the office, talked to us about players, we planned what we were doing and who we wanted to sign. He asked me to contact one or another agent. Fredi Bobić comes in, whom I know is supposed to be responsible for this. Although I didn't have the opportunity to contact him apart from one working meeting.

But if these people approached me like that, why should I think that someone could thank me? I have an important contract, I am in a whirlwind of activity, so I decided that these people must have gathered opinions about me. Despite the last difficult months in Legia, I felt that it could still be a challenge and development. I like pressure, I like to act in this way. I approached it as let's get to know each other and act. If after half a year or after some time you decide that there is no flow between us, or that I am not competent enough for you to continue working together, then you will tell me about it. And everyone will go their own way.

On my way to the club for a meeting, I was convinced that I was going to the presentation of the new scouting director, who was to become Piotr Zasada. That was the information that everyone in the sports department received. I didn't know that only Piotr Zasada would be at the meeting. We spoke for the first time in our lives. He informed me that he was not interested in working with me and that we were parting ways from today.

Was it his decision?

That's what was conveyed to me. The form of the message itself was quite weak. I worked at Legia for three years, but that's not three days. And "Kiełbik" or "Włodar", considering their previous roles, spent half their lives at the club. This should have been handled with more respect and class. I think that in this situation Michał himself should have informed us about it. If you want to be a sports director at such a big club, have the courage to take on some decisions. I want to continue working in this industry and I would have handled it differently.

Have you seen the fans' reaction to the news of your dismissal?

It occurred to me that they received it positively.

There was an outburst of euphoria. This shows how scouting was received. Zasada, who fans may not know, got a plus from the start.

I don't blame the fans. I buy it, I understand it. I buy that the reaction to our dismissal was: get the hell out of the club. The fans judged us through the prism of memes, that we meet, drink coffee, turn on Canal+ and choose players from the Ekstraklasa. Additionally, we were mainly credited with transfers that the public considered as failures. There was little talk about good moves, and in my opinion there were a lot of them. At the end you read that these names are leaving Legia and it's great. The people who dismiss us are now giving us a thumbs up and it's easier from the start. Because they finally got rid of them.

I saw the comments after we left. Kiełbowicz and Włodarczyk were losers, as former players they did nothing and had comfortable jobs. I'll get back to those jobs in a moment. Mazur? "Some anonymous. I didn't even know he was in this club for three years. And Zieliński's sidekick." I'm glad I was anonymous to these people, because I wasn't the one who was supposed to shine or play a celebrity. I never cared about that. I was excited that I was fulfilling my childhood dream, that I ended up in such a great place as Legia and I could do my job to the max. A fan doesn't know what it looked like. He can judge it in this way, that I was a freeloader in a comfortable job, and a friend or colleague got me the job.

Today, being outside the club, I will never say anything bad about Legia. For three years I felt like I was working in a top European club. Because Legia has the potential to be such a club. I was impressed by the interest it generates from fans and journalists. You enter this place and you feel the ball.

The last time the fractured Legia was glued together was in the spring of 2022. I remember Zieliński's meeting with the club's employees, where he emphasized that you have to play together inside. And up to a certain point, you did, you did play together. However, this season, when things started to fall apart at Legia's court, there was no unity. Again, cliques, factions. It hit Legia with double the force, because that's the kind of club it is.

We return to my words that without cohesion, being together, unity, you will not build anything. I speak for myself as one of the small pieces of the puzzle, but nevertheless constituting some part of this puzzle. I also take responsibility for the fact that in the end we were not the champion. All of us from the sports department should take it on the chest that we did not bring about this. Because that is where Legia should be heading. We did not achieve what the fans expected from us. We did not succeed. We did not do it. However, from the perspective of the middle, I believe that we were on the right path to achieve this. We needed time. We lost stability in late autumn, we stopped going in a specific direction. In winter, there were already consequences of this.

A year and a half ago I was preparing a series of reports "Legia in Purgatory". I thought then that the Legion would be going from this purgatory towards paradise after the sins it committed. Eighteen months have passed and it is still there.

Today, the club decided to return to changes and rotation. I don't know whether Legia will benefit or lose from this. It is possible that it will gain. And great. Because then it will become the Polish champion again, and people will be happy. And I will be happy too.

Only with other scouts.

I am glad that Norbert Misiak has stayed in the department. A very good scout, and in the future perhaps a very good scouting director.

It seems that he was the one who traveled to Japan to find Morishita.

Norbi traveled a lot and watched a lot of footballers. This guy has been in Legia since he was a child. He was a footballer, injuries didn't allow him to do more. He was a coach in the academy, now he works as a scout. Hard-working, understands football very well, has an eye for footballers, can see that "something" in them.

In our department there was a lot of experience, a bit of youth, a different perspective on football. Radek Mozyrko organized work well, took care of formalities, had good contacts. He could have 50 conversations in one day. He conducted both conversation number one and number fifty with the same energy. "Kiełbik" and "Włodar" brought a lot of experience to the department. Both of them simply cared about Legia, and what's more, they had seen football from every possible angle. They had been in Legia for years - previously as players, later in other roles as employees. You really can't accuse them of lack of diligence and dedication, none of them worked for a contract. Or a cushy job. Besides, that's what amused me the most. Which side was warm? They criticize you at every turn, they go with you at every turn. One of us added something private on social media, it was: Włodarczyk at the gym. A beating. Włodarczyk at his son's match. Why isn't he working?

Mazur watches his friend's fight at Fame MMA.

Damn, we are people too. Just like you go to work and after work you lead your private life, we lead ours too. We also cared about Legia's success and what was happening in the club hurt just as much - especially in recent months. Okay, you can judge this section that it ultimately lost for you because we did not achieve our number one goal. But let's not ignore the things that were good and let's not take away the real view of people. A fan does not have a full perspective, his view is very limited.

How was he supposed to see your perspective if you didn't say anything?

If I had to be in this role again, I wouldn't say anything either. Because that wasn't my job.

The problem is that none of you spoke. Neither Zieliński nor Mozyrko. Your silence did not bring much, because you became a punching bag.

Perhaps we were. I don't want to be responsible for Jacek or Radek. We just did our job, and she is associated with the fact that you have to take some things on the chest. This is how the ball works. If you are not ready for it, it will be difficult for you to stay in this profession. In a way, I understand the fans that due to the lack of championship, they unloaded the frustration on us. However, it is worth looking at all this than just hitting the sports division.