Away Days: Should British football replicate the Wisla Krakow experience? | OneFootball

We’ve all succumbed to a metaphorical red mist, perhaps during a heated argument with a partner or watching fully grown adults surrender to brain worms at the airport.

But a literal red mist? Having never been responsible for a Bonfire Night display, I’d yet to be engulfed until last Friday night in southern Poland.

The noise behind the goal as Wisla Krakow prepared to face Puszcza Niepolomice was deafening enough that I didn’t actually realise the players had come out.

Two rows in front of me, a youngster wearing a Spiderman mask stood on his seat and held two flares aloft; surrounding fans obediently parted the waves for this teenage Moses.

This was replicated across the whole stand before each pyro was lit in perfect synchrony. In seconds, the pitch, stands and my consciousness were lost in red smoke.

The heat was enough for me to unzip my coat on a not especially warm night. Accompanied by the sound of rhythmic Polish chanting, I resolved to let the scene wash over me and postpone my critical faculties.

I was torn between taking photos for posterity (and potential Instagram use) and the desire to experience this atmosphere in fullness.

Eventually, I compromised with a few snaps before shoving my phone out of sight and out of mind.

These pyros provide the kind of illicit buzz that prompts an involuntary smile and hooked this curious neutral into a Polish Second Division match deeper than any matchday accumulator.

Afterwards, I looked in the mirror and found my clothes and skin flecked with soot. If football writing doesn’t work out, then moonlighting as a Victorian chimney sweep would be an alternative career.

It feels pertinent to experience this in 2026. In Scotland and across England’s football pyramid, fans are taking inspiration from Europe’s ultra groups to inject some life back into the matchday experience.

But can the continental experience be replicated here? And, ultimately, should we want to?

Sleeping giants

Poland has always intrigued me. My grandad was Polish, escaping to Germany during the Second World War and meeting my Ukrainian grandmother in Cologne’s Ford car factory.

But I’ve never been until now. Walking around Krakow’s Old Town, where the grandeur matches Prague or Vienna, is a minor Damascus moment; I’d never appreciated quite how Eastern European I look.

My previous experiences with Polish football had involved watching their stodgy national team clog the arteries of a major tournament like a less aesthetically pleasing England.

But this is a country with a strong football pedigree, booming economy (leave the Old Town and new buildings are sprouting everywhere), modern stadiums after hosting Euro 2012 and several well-supported clubs in the big cities.

Describing Poland as Europe’s sleeping giants, especially now that Russia are persona non grata, ambles lazily into cliche territory, but they really should be doing better.

No Polish club has reached the Champions League group stages since Legia Warsaw 10 years ago, although they’re regulars at Conference League level and their UEFA coefficient is much improved.

Wisla Krakow have their own European heritage – beating Barcelona in 2008 – but have been in the second tier since 2022.

They’re top now and could all but confirm promotion by beating Puszcza. It’s the weekend, the sun is shining and a large crowd snakes its way from the centre of Krakow towards the ground.

Tickets costing the equivalent of £9 attracts Wisla’s biggest attendance of the season, including a notably high number of teenagers and women. On the surface, it feels more accessible than England.

Goalkeeping gaffes & Marijuana

Once the smoke had cleared, it appeared that Wisla had been listening to a Mikel Arteta TED talk; they were visibly cowed by the occasion.

The first half passed slowly as both teams stomped around with little finesse. My attention began to drift, focusing on the Puszcza’s goalkeeper’s outfit.

While his team-mates wore white shirts with black sleeves, 18-year-old Michal Perchel wore the exact inverse with a pair of red shorts that Jorge Campos would consider a tad garish.

It’s eerily similar to what I picked from River Island with my first proper pay cheque. Perchel looks like an outfield player moonlighting in goal, although he performed with composure throughout.

The noise was unrelenting, but largely unconnected to the match itself. This is a common criticism of European ultras; all nuance and on-pitch subtleties are bludgeoned by a megaphone-yielding hypeman.

A foul on the home keeper sparked a brawl that stops just short of being a bench-clearer. The whistles from the Krakow ultras pierced the still night sky.

Just as I was jotting down some notes and readying to finish my bag of paprika crisps, Wisla scored from nowhere – a tidy cross and header to consign 45 minutes of huff-and-puff to history.

Scarves twirled in delight and my nostrils were invaded with an aroma of tobacco – cigarettes, not vapes – and shampoo from a nearby group of teenage girls.

There was also a waft of marijuana near the toilets pre-match; with the benefit of hindsight, it crystallises a thought I’d been circling since entering the ground.

It was loud and the flock of shaved heads would have your local constabulary twitching nervously, but the atmosphere didn’t feel aggressive in the slightest.

Perhaps the presence of so many women naturally curtails the worst excesses, but not knowing a single word of Polish helps as well. Home fans could have been calling for the referee to be hung, drawn and quartered and my head would remain metaphorically underwater, idly tapping my foot to the melody.

After the break, Wisla’s immediate promotion chances were capsized by two goalkeeping gaffes, the kind to lure Danny Baker out of retirement.

Patryk Letkiewicz allowed one shot through his hands as if they were made of poppadoms, before idly watching the ball pinball around the area to enable Puszcza to snaffle a second equaliser.

The thinned-out section of away supporters, decked in anti-Glazer green and yellow, could barely be heard but you didn’t need binoculars to see them convulse with joy.

Wisla applied some late incoherent pressure, but it finished 2-2. It’s their third draw in a row and this display was a 90-minute cautionary tale against performance anxiety.

Authenticity

Walking back towards the centre of Krakow, a group of British stags declared this was far above the matchday experience back home.

They sounded both enthused and wistful. Buzzing to have been here, but resigned to the impossibility of replicating such scenes in domestic stadiums.

The desire for authenticity is an obsession that defines contemporary culture, but the more society strives for it, the further away it becomes.

One walk around Manchester’s Northern Quarter, where cafes are replaced by ‘locally sourced’ outlets which double the price of a coffee, is enough to yearn for less ostentatious times.

Premier League football is also becoming a lost cause. Clubs are concerned by declining atmospheres, but resort to light shows or in-house funded tifos rather than cutting ticket prices and trusting fans to do the rest.

Something is authentic because it is. Even if Wisla Krakow fan rituals are performative in their own way, it’s at least organic instead of being dictated from above.

It’s also immersive, encouraging participation from fans with no skin in the game. During the entire 90 minutes, I didn’t see anybody doomscrolling and treating the match as a second screen.

I think what we miss is not so much atmosphere as a sense of community. A sense that clubs value their loyal hardcore, instead of making doe eyes at one-off attendees who’ll raid the club shop beforehand.

Allowing fans to take the lead surrenders control of the ownership, something that your average billionaire simply wouldn’t countenance.

So what we have instead is a pastiche of atmosphere, superficially alluring but hollow. Fans can see through it and it’s no wonder many are pining for the European experience.

Instead of replicating banners and clothing without context, the conditions need to be created for fans to generate their own atmosphere. Authenticity cannot be engineered, but it can be enabled.

By Michael Lee