Okęcie Airport incident
As an incident of insubordination, when strikes and other forms of civil resistance were intensifying in communist Poland, it caused a domestic press storm, and led to the suspension of several prominent players and the resignation of Ryszard Kulesza, the team manager.
Kulesza and one of his assistants, Bernard Blaut, decided to leave Młynarczyk behind, much to the indignation of some of the players, including Stanisław Terlecki, Zbigniew Boniek, Włodzimierz Smolarek, and Władysław Żmuda.
The Polish Football Association sent Terlecki, Młynarczyk, Boniek, and Żmuda home and imposed various bans preventing them from playing at the international and club level, over the next year.
In June 1976, a series of protests took place across communist Poland, soon after the government announced plans to sharply increase the fixed prices charged nationwide for many basic commodities.
The government took several steps to obstruct Solidarity's emergence, enforcing press censorship and cutting off telephone connections between the coast and the hinterland, but despite these efforts, by late 1980, four out of every five Polish workers were members of the union.
[7] The squad's departure was scheduled for 29 November, ten days before the game, so the players could attend a training camp in Italy, then contest a warm-up match against a team representing the Italian league.
[9] He was known for openly mocking the establishment with subversive abandon, and regularly made jokes in public about communist authority figures and organisations, prompting the ire of the Polish Football Association (PZPN) and the Warsaw police force.
[9] Late on 28 November 1980, the night before the team's departure from Warsaw for Italy, goalkeeper Józef Młynarczyk and forward Włodzimierz Smolarek, both of Widzew Łódź, left the Hotel Vera without permission.
According to Andrzej Iwan, another member of the team, the main topic of conversation was Zieliński's estranged wife, who had been caught prostituting herself around Warsaw, and had since moved to Italy.
[1] A senior national team official, Colonel Roman Lisiewicz of the Polish Army, said he saw the goalkeeper and the journalist reach the hotel in a taxi soon after 05:00, but rather than going to his room Młynarczyk left again with Zieliński before returning around 07:00.
"[1] Grzegorz Majchrzak, a historian of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, questions Boniek's words, positing that he might have distorted events in an attempt to distance himself from Terlecki.
[12] A number of journalists attacked the players who had supported Młynarczyk; the Przegląd Sportowy sports magazine ran the headline "No Mercy for Those Guilty of the Scandal at the Airport" while Tempo, another journal, was similarly severe, proclaiming "This Cannot Be Tolerated".
[9] Seeing this as a second act of defiance, the PZPN promptly sent Terlecki, Młynarczyk, Boniek and Żmuda home, escorted by General Marian Ryba of the Polish Army, who was also the football association president.
Securing the support of 16 other Poland international players, he wrote a letter to the PZPN declaring their intention to do so, leading the authorities to order them to face a tribunal.
The national team players' council, at that time comprising Marek Dziuba, Paweł Janas and Wojciech Rudy, wrote an open letter expressing surprise at what they saw as excessive sanctions against Terlecki, Boniek, Żmuda and Młynarczyk.
[14] Ryba left his post in April 1981, along with a number of his contemporaries, described by Stefan Szczepłek, a sports journalist and football historian, as "honest officials, together with some football-friendly Polish Army officers".
[1] In their place came a number of communist officials, most prominently Włodzimierz Reczek, an erstwhile Politburo member, who took over as head of the football association despite a reputation for not liking the sport.
[12] According to Majchrzak, Boniek and Żmuda apologised for their actions before the General Committee for Physical Culture and Sport of the Polish People's Republic, the PZPN's governing body, but kept this from Terlecki,[1] who appealed to have his ban lifted several times, but to no avail.
[9][10] Majchrzak stresses that Terlecki was the only player involved in the incident not to regain his place in the Poland team, and claims that this was down to an intense grudge held against him by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Secret Police (SB).
Terlecki developed his own theory that the media circus following the airport incident had been deliberately engineered by the SB to head the players off forming their own trade union.
[1] Poland qualified for the 1982 World Cup with a perfect record,[17] and performed strongly in the competition, losing to Italy in the semi-finals but beating France in a play-off to claim third place.
In three seasons with Pittsburgh he became the club's all-time top goalscorer, but managers reportedly had trouble "harness[ing] Terlecki's fiery temper"[20] and his wife Ewa became intensely homesick.
