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Warsaw clubs’ bonus for “Lewy” Barcelona transfer

Polish football star Robert Lewandowski’s late-career move from Bayern Munich to Barcelona will bring a host of small Warsaw clubs a tasty 5 percent share of the EUR 50 million transfer fee, according to UEFA rules.

While the cheers of the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona or the groans of Allianz Stadium faithful in Munich at the news of the transfer of Robert Lewandowski are making headlines worldwide, in Warsaw local journalists have got out their calculators to figure out how much the teams he played for as a youth are likely to cash in from the local hero’s move.

The most obvious clubs to benefit are of course Legia Warsaw and Lech Poznań. The young Robert played briefly with Legia in the 2005-2006 season before being sold on to Znicz Pruszków in the suburbs of Warsaw for PLN 15,000 PLN, which was then worth EUR 3,800. For that year of 16-year-old Lewandowski’s development in their second team, Legia will receive a handsome 250,000 EUR according to the UEFA solidarity rules.

A pot of 5 percent is shared among teams according to the time spent there and the stage of development between the ages of 12 and 23.

Lech on the other hand will get EUR 1 mln for the two years he graced their pitch.

The club in between, the much smaller Znicz will garner EUR 500,000 under the rules, and his first youth team Varsovia will get EUR 600,000.

Meanwhile, the smallest club Robert played for in the Warsaw garden suburb of Sadyba, KS Delta which plays on the shores of Warsaw’s Czerniakowski Lake could garner EUR 165,000 for the 8-month period he spent there in 2004-2005.

Apart from a brief sojourn in the local webpage Ogrodowe Miasto tracked down the club chairman, Andrzej Treciakowski, who was off on holiday just before the official announcement and therefore slightly coy about celebrating the news too early.

He did however say that should they receive the bonus it would be spent on the development of the club. He also joked that “it’s a pity he changes club so rarely.”

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