On 19th March Lech Poznań football club will celebrate its 85th anniversary. Today, it is one of the best known Polish clubs in Europe.

During the first years, the club went under different names, including Lutnia Poznań and KWP Poznań. Since the 1930s it has been connected with Polish railway which is why Lech footballers are still known as “Kolejarz” (railwayman).
But it was only in 1947 that Lech was promoted to Division One. The first Division One match was lost to Widzew Łódź 3-4. Lech kept playing in Division One incessantly until 1957. At that time, Lech was twice at the third position in the table.

The 1960s was a lean period for the club. It came to a point where Lech played in Division Three for a few years. However, in the early 1970s the club regained its position and entered Division One again. A few years later, Lech became one of the best Polish football teams.
It was in 1978 that Lech played for the European Cup for the first time, against a German MSV Duisburg as its first opponent. In 1982 the Poznań club enjoyed its first major success by winning the Polish Cup. It repeated the success twice by the end of the 1980s. Lech also won Polish Championship twice.
Soon the successes in Poland were followed by those achieved on the European arena. On the stadium at Bułgarska Street where Lech has played for more than 20 years, the club met with FC Aberdeen, Athletic Bilbao and FC Liverpool, to name only a few. However, the best remembered today is the match played in 1988 against the famous FC Barcelona trained by the Dutch Johan Cruyff, with the English Gary Lineker in the attack. Lech was promoted after many a dramatic shift thanks to penalty kicks.      
The early 1990s saw Lech Poznań winning the title of the national Football Champion again and doing it more than once. Lech would also play for European cups. The club was hit by a crisis in 1994. Each season would turn out to be worse than the previous one. As a result, Lech dropped to Division Two. The team was on the brink of bankruptcy but sponsors and the city authorities, among others, managed to save the club. One of the successes enjoyed in the recent years was winning the Polish Cup. Last year, the club was bought by the Amica corporation, one of major household appliance producers in Poland. The new owner aims at transforming Lech into a European-class team in the next few years.
The celebration of the 85th anniversary of the club will be held during the whole year. As part of the celebration, youth football tournaments will be organised. It is possible that Lech will play a showpiece match against Belgian Championship Anderlecht Brussels. The club authorities would also like to give one of the streets in Poznań the name of “Lech 1922 Poznań”.