As life progresses and everything evolves, usually very quickly in fact, the result is often situations, perceptions, lifestyles or work from the past, losing value. To be underestimated or even devalued as "funny", "graphic". Consequently, the same happens with the persons, the protagonists of these situations.
Not with him Jacek Gmoch but the reasons are also different: Because we all like him, because he understood the Greeks very early, because the urban legend says that he understood and spoke Greek fluently when he did not have a camera in front of him, because after all we did not see many achieve everything, what he. Even if they have more modern methods now…
Our current "protagonist" was involved in coaching earlier than he expected, because his career as a footballer ended earlier than he expected. She was doing well in Lega Warsaw, with whose jersey he had won two cups and had emerged as the best player in Poland, but a serious injury brought an end. And the beginning of… coach Gmoch.
First in Legia and then as an assistant to Kazimir Gorski in the national team that came out 3rd in the 1974 World Cup, to follow the 5th place in '78 with Jacek at the helm. And immediately after his resignation, because he did not consider the course good. Possible. In any case, it is important that a year later, in 1979, he would come to Greece for the first time to take over the PAS Giannina, which would lead to 4th place, starting an impressive journey for him.
A trip that had titles and European successes with a big team, had a championship with a provincial team, had a dismissal before a fiesta, had tenures in all three of POK, had fights with stars, had crazy training sessions, even had iron cages. In short, he had it all, because Gmoch stayed in Greece for so many years, as is the title of his book, to let different stories be transferred from year to year.
Like, for example, those for training. Today, making these based on meteorologists can be somewhat heard. Then, however, in the 80s, it was pioneering for Greece. According to those who lived through those years, Gmoch was preparing his team for Sunday's match, based on the weather forecast. If the match was to be rainy, the pitch was… swimming pool during the week. If it was not raining on Sunday, all is well.
That, however, was… extra. The basis, the rule, was that the players had to suffer during training. The physical condition was the A and the Z for the Pole, with them Panathinaikos and Larissa, especially, to fly. Double and as the "4" of the Champions with the greens, championship with Thessaly… Probably had success with Olympiakos, but there the stars and especially the Lagios Detari and Juan Hilberto Funes, it is said that they did not go crazy from their joy. And in Piraeus, people have always supported the stars more and the coaches less…
But this, as far as Gmoch is concerned, was the exception, since he did not face such problems anywhere else. According to testimonies, oral or written, of those who had experienced him in his first term at Panathinaikos, for example, the Pole managed to beat all his players, even if at first he gave them another impression. For Anthimos Kapsis, for example, it is said that at first he did not gain the trust of Gmoch, but when he saw him kick his legs in every training session, he finally anointed him captain.
In the meantime, it was quite common for Polish players to kick their feet in those years. Either in training with the ball, or in running, which was incessant in the mountains, even those around Athens, with him following his players on a motorbike. And maybe that's why, in the end, his players also ran like motorbikes during the match.
The bad thing is that there were cases when journalists had to run and did not catch up. His confrontation with Menios Sakellaropoulos when he was at Panathinaikos, resulted in the journalist being attacked by fans one day on the Avenue, in which an… iron cage was once built, from where the punished coach would give instructions to his players. A crazy story, which never really came true, in the sense that the… cage appeared and disappeared.
Gmoch was punished, the greens made sure to build a cage above gate 11 so that the Pole could give instructions from there, the matter was leaked to the press, Panathinaikos was called to discredit the sport, the cage disappeared immediately and it was said that it could it was a photomontage and the opportunity for everyone to see Gmoch doing that too, to hear his characteristic whistles during the match, being in a cage, was lost.
Small evil… The real evil, after all, was the finale of his story with AEL. Winning the championship with Larissa is, as he says, the biggest success of his career. It would be even if he did not say so, of course, but there he lived the greatest bitterness of his career, after he was fired immediately after winning the mathematical title, a race before the end, because he had agreed with George Koskotas to take Olympic and had not said anything to the administration of Thessaly.
In 2020 now, 32 years later, with life moving on and everything evolving, this attitude towards Jacek Gmoch can be considered somewhat. But it is so, "in Greece" that he also says. This "Greece" that he loved and showed by working in a total of 12 teams until 2003, to return as an official for a few games at Panathinaikos in 2010, now knowing very well that he now had the recognition as the "jaw" that we like all…