WARSAW, Poland — A grassroots Warsaw soccer club formed by fans more than a decade ago to counter what it calls aggressive nationalist stadium behavior is now trying to attract fresh attention in a country where politics increasingly reaches the stands.
AKS Zły, short for Alternatywny Klub Sportowy Zły, was founded in 2015 by supporters of Warsaw’s main clubs Legia and Polonia, after members said they encountered hostile behavior in stadiums and around matches. The club is still owned and run democratically by its fans, and it fields men’s and women’s teams, with supporters describing an atmosphere centered on welcome rather than provocation.
The club’s organizers say Poland’s broader fan culture has shifted in a more hostile direction. “We decided to create a club that would be different, where all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, race or nationality, could feel good and welcome,” AKS Zły coordinator Jan Dziubecki told The Associated Press. Dziubecki added that fan culture in Poland has “drifted sharply to the right and openly hateful slogans are common,” a trend he and other supporters say helped motivate the club’s original stance.
That stance arrives during a political period that members see as potentially colliding with their goals. President Karol Nawrocki, backed by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party, was elected last year, and he is known for a long-standing allegiance to Lechia Gdańsk. According to reports raised during the election campaign, Nawrocki had taken part in a street brawl between soccer fans, and Nawrocki later said he had been involved in many “noble” fights in his life.
While AKS Zły’s leadership acknowledges that Nawrocki’s presidency might strengthen the type of fan culture the club was created to oppose, Dziubecki said the opposite outcome is possible. “Maybe more fans will come to our stadium again,” he said with a smile.
Some of the club’s foundation is tied to people and places beyond the pitch. Julius Wrzosek, the owner of the Offside bar in Warsaw’s Praga district, is described as a founder and is often seen selling tickets at the stadium entrance. Wrzosek said he was a lifelong fan of Legia Warszawa but was eventually kicked out of a more radical section because he refused to sing chants sending greetings to people serving prison terms; he said friends aligned with Polonia were also marginalized for similar reasons, leading them to create their own club.
Wrzosek said the bar serves as more than a meeting spot, functioning as a venue where the club occasionally organizes social events, often connected to local history in Praga. In March, the bar co-hosted an event honoring Stefan Okrzeja, a socialist worker who fought for Polish independence at the beginning of the 20th century. “It bothered me that in Poland, a country with a great history of leftist and left-wing values, there isn’t a single club that is democratic, that doesn’t impose its own version of fan culture,” Wrzosek said.
On matchdays, supporters describe a different tone from the club’s framing of mainstream stadium culture. At a recent women’s game in Poland’s second division against a team from Słupca, fans in the modest Praga stadium said they welcomed the visitors and urged their own side to score, with songs kept to the rhythm of drums. They also described complaints about referees as minimal and polite.
Former AKS Zły player Eliza Górska-Tran, now a supporter, said the club’s inclusive approach helps create motivation for players and for the surrounding community. “It’s not just empty words when you say that the fans are the 12th player, because it really helps and motivates you to give more,” she told The Associated Press. Górska-Tran, 37, said she attended the game with her wife and two young children and stressed the importance of the supportive community created around the club that she helped to run after her playing days.
Górska-Tran said AKS Zły embraces LGBTQ+ and immigrant players and that the club has invested in its male and female teams equally. She said fans even staged a wedding ceremony for her and her partner at the stadium after they married in Scotland, where same-sex marriage is legal, unlike in Poland. “I also remember my last match before I got pregnant, it was an unforgettable experience,” she said. “There were flares, including rainbow-colored smoke, on the football pitch.”
Current player Alicja Cichońska, in her seventh season with AKS Zły, said she joined after hearing about the inclusive community built around the club. “Football should unite us all, not divide us, because there’s enough of that in society already,” Cichońska said. The club also says its academy operates with solidarity on costs, with richer parents helping cover expenses for poorer ones.