Girls on the pitch. Women’s football is growing stronger, we also won a medal at the championship in Colombia

At the end of October, the women’s national football team defeated Romania 4-1 in Gdańsk and sealed promotion to the final of the Euro 2025 play-offs (6-2 on aggregate). Everything happened in front of a record number of spectators in the history of women’s football in our country. The match was watched live on Polsat Plus Areniew Gdańsk by a record-breaking 8,449 fans, which is a record attendance for the Polish women’s national team match. Now there is only one opponent – ​​Austria – separating the women’s team from advancing to next year’s European Championships. On November 29, the players will play against the Austrian national team in Gdańsk, and the rematch will take place on December 3 in Vienna.

Gdańsk: home of the Polish women’s national team

Football players most often take to the pitch in Gdańsk and this is not a coincidence: at the end of August, the City of Gdańsk, the Polsat Plus Arena Gdańsk stadium and the Polish Football Association announced the establishment of strategic cooperation, under which the stadium will become the official home of the Polish women’s national team for the next three years. .

– Gdańsk is a city with a rich sports tradition. The amber Polsat Plus Arena stadium hosted events of such importance as the European Championships in 2012 and the Europa League final in 2021. The Polish men’s national football team also played here. Now our Gdańsk arena will become the national stadium of the Polish women’s soccer team, said the mayor of Gdańsk, Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, at the press conference during which this decision was announced.

She added that thanks to the agreement signed with the Polish Football Association, the Gdańsk stadium will play a key role in the development and promotion of women’s football in Poland.

PZPN focuses on women’s football

In recent years, the Polish Football Association established the Women’s Football Department, developed the “Women’s Football Strategy for 2022-2026”, and successively launched new projects aimed at supporting and promoting women’s football. It seemed a necessary step to indicate the place that would become the official home of the Polish women’s national team. Thus, the Gdańsk stadium will become for the women’s team what PGE Narodowy is for Michał Probierz’s team.

– The development of women’s football is one of the four main pillars of the federation’s strategy. We create the best possible conditions for women’s football to gain the interest and prestige it deserves. Hence the decision to organize the European Under-19 Championships in 2025, as well as the Under-20 World Championships a year later, emphasized Cezary Kulesza, president of the Polish Football Association.

He recalled that the Association is applying to organize the senior European Championships in 2029. – One of the steps to popularize women’s football is the selection of a stadium that will be the home of the Polish national team. We are very pleased that from today it has become Gdańsk – he admitted.

30 thousand girls and women participate in football games

Women’s football is becoming more and more popular now, but that does not mean that it is something new that did not exist before. Not only did she develop, but she also achieved success. In 2013, the Polish U17 women’s national team won gold at the European Championships. Back then, there were 3,000 players participating in football games in Poland, today this number has increased 10 times. Currently, we have over 30,000 registered female soccer players in Poland, who can compete in as many as 6 leagues in senior soccer. The best teams play in the Orlen Ekstraliga women’s league, and there are five leagues below.

The level of professionalization of Polish clubs playing at the level of the Orlen Women’s Ekstraliga and the Orlen 1 Women’s League, in which a total of 24 teams take part, is also increasing. More and more men’s clubs recognize the need to invest in women’s football. In the top league we have teams such as Pogoń Szczecin, Śląsk Wrocław or GKS Katowice, and Lech Poznań and Legia Warszawa are slowly knocking on the door of the elite.

Ewa Pajor reached FC Barcelona Femeni

More and more girls are entering the world of football and staying there for longer. Women’s teams are being formed at schools and football academies, and the players believe that one day the matches they play will attract crowds similar to those who follow the competitions of soccer players in England or the USA.

Interest in women’s football is growing, as evidenced by the increasing number of mentions of it in the national media. In February, Ewa Pajor, a Polish footballer who played as a forward, appeared on the cover of the weekly Piłka Nożna. Since the 2024/25 season, she has been a player of FC Barcelona Femeni. Since 2013, he has been a member of the senior national team.

Her performances in the Catalan team certainly translate into interest in women’s football. The captain of the Polish national team is currently the leader of the Spanish League F scorers’ classification (data as of November 18, 2024). Pajor was also nominated in the plebiscite for the best athlete of Przegląd Sportowy as the first female footballer in history.

Advancing to next year’s European Women’s Championship, which will be held in Switzerland, would certainly help popularize women’s football. 16 teams will take part. 9 of them are already certain of promotion, and play-off matches are to determine the remaining seven.

The organizers estimate that a total of over 720,000 fans will appear in the stands.

ORLEN supports women’s football

The general sponsor of Polish football is ORLEN, which continues to support the discipline after the merger with LOTOS. In 2023, the cooperation agreement with the Polish Football Association was extended, under which the company will be the general sponsor of Polish football, 11 national teams, including the men’s national team, and the title sponsor of football games for the next four years, including: Women’s Ekstraliga, Women’s Polish Cup and Polish eCup. Cooperation with the Polish Football Association also includes the company’s implementation of football projects for children and youth.

ORLEN, recognizing the value of women’s football, looks at it broadly and, in addition to supporting national teams in all age categories (including the Polish U-17 national team, which advanced to the quarterfinals at the last World Cup), the company also supports Polish women’s football players, who have achieved enormous achievements in recent weeks. success.

The first championships and amps are already back with a medal

The Polish women’s national football team is a unique team in Europe because the Poles are the first women’s national team in this sport on our continent. The team was founded in 2022 and is still developing dynamically. In 2023, the team played its first international match (winning against the USA in Warsaw 1:0), which was also the first international match in the history of women’s football.

In November 2024, the women’s football team made its debut at the first ever world championship in Colombia – and it was an immediate success, because the girls brought home the bronze medal. The opponents of the bronze medal match were the Kenyans, but it was the Polish women who dealt the cards. They won 1-0, and Monika Kukla scored the winning goal in the second minute of the match.

— The Kenyan players played quite aggressively, there were proverbial punches, putting the balls between the leg and the ball, which made the run very difficult. They even played a good match, but we were able to play well, some of which ended in a significant threat to the Kenyan goalkeeper – said Monika Kukla in an interview with “Fakt”.

She admitted that she and her friends feel a bit dissatisfied because they would like to play in the final, but the bronze medal proves that they are a really good team and can even win gold.

The match between Poland and Austria will take place on November 29 at 18:00 at the Polsat Plus Arena Gdańsk stadium. Tickets priced at PLN 15 (discount) and PLN 30 (normal) are available via the website: sklep.laczynaspilka.pl.