90' | Ostatnia zmiana w drużynie legionistów #LGDLEG:@Iloskibrian 🔄 @VesovicM29— Legia Warszawa 🏆 (@LegiaWarszawa) March 11, 2018 Makes his league debut for Legia Warsaw. @bungadiri
YA promotion AND a name change. Potentially a big day for this kid. @bungadiri I have a feeling this guy's last name is going to be the subject of the most misspellings since the "Sardokie" brothers.
That teams don't want to waste draft choices on players determined to go to Europe. That's what it says to me anyway. That too. I love the bigsoccer version of Cleek's Law...whatever MLS does is wrong, updated daily.
Sadly, they don't wear blue, or else we'd have the most obvious thread title since Cameron went to Stoke. Iloski Blues.
Sounds like Brian was just in the right place, right time since it doesn't sound like he had many other options in Europe besides Legia. Legia just so happened to be in Florida for training and sent scouts to the combine where they saw Brian. http://americansoccernow.com/articles/after-signing-with-legia-warsaw-iloski-seeks-ambitious-goals. MLS has a reputation of having a negative bias towards undersized creative mids (Roldan would be another example, albeit he did not drop down as far as Brian). Hope to see Iloski impress overseas, god knows the usmnt is starving for creative attackers/depth there.
On the bench: Skład Legii na mecz z Wisłą Płock! ⬇️ #LEGWPŁ pic.twitter.com/ZiL7nETyYh— Legia Warszawa 🏆 (@LegiaWarszawa) May 9, 2018
It remains to be seen Illoski he will feature but Legia Warsaw drew Cork City in the first qualifying round of the Champions League. Coincidentally in that matchup, Cork City's John Caulfield (born in the Bronx) will become the first American-born manager to lead a team in any stage of the UEFA Champions League.
Started in friendly against 2nd tier side: Składy na dzisiejszy sparing #LegiaWalka pic.twitter.com/sDnhlTivcH— Iza Kruk (@Kruk_Izabela) June 24, 2018 Out of the match early: 31' | Pierwsza zmiana trenera Klafuricia.Berto 🔄 Iloski#LEGSTM: [2-1]— Legia Warszawa 🏆 (@LegiaWarszawa) June 24, 2018
They should win that tie, but it won't be easy. Cork City are a full-time side (the only one in the League of Ireland) and the squad, especially the older players, has a lot of experience from the English lower divisions and even the SPL. Players with experience at Reading players are heavily represented. The League of Ireland is very weak, but Cork and Dundalk (who had a remarkable run in the EL last season) are strong squads and play intelligent football.
I glanced at Cork City's roster and saw that they've got former Toronto draft pick and NCAA D2 all-star Steven Beattie.
On the bench for a friendly: Skład na mecz towarzyski z @1910radomiak.Transmisja ➡ https://t.co/3PrARefUxb pic.twitter.com/NRihElpHfz— Legia Warszawa 🏆 (@LegiaWarszawa) July 6, 2018 Enters at the half. W drugiej połowie na boisku meldują się Radosław Majecki @AwMajecki i Brian Iloski. #LEGRAD— Legia Warszawa 🏆 (@LegiaWarszawa) July 6, 2018
Iloski is on the list of players which was approved for the first CL Q round vs Cork. However, I expect him either to make only rare appearances entering for 20 minutes max once game is already decided, or go for loan to a smaller club for a year. I do not believe he is able to make a squad of 18 - 20 players at Legia just yet. Legia squad is simply loaded with good players, and pressure to win at all 3 fronts (league, cup, CL) is huge, so this leaves only very limited time for these less experienced or proven players to get any minutes. Loan is not a bad option in this situation, otherwise Iloski may get couple of minutes in the early rounds of Polish Cup when playing lower tier opposition, or in early stages of European competition, if aggregate score is already decided. Legia cannot afford to miss group stages of European competition, so they won't be taking any risks here.
Forgot to add, that Legia's coach, Klaf, has stated that it will be on Sunday, that he will decide who should stay with the club, and who goes on loan.
Legia is currently ranked 59 in Europe. This means, that it is way more consistent in European competitions then the likes of Fenerbahce, Feyenoord, Inter, Eintracht, and many other famous clubs. Between 2012 and 2017 Legia has not lost a single game in European Qualifiers (it got knocked out from CL only due to paperwork error vs Celtic, which was a famous situation worldwide, and 3:3 aggregate vs Steaua on away goals, with refs dissolving two good goals for us due to bad offside calls). In this time period Legia also managed to win group of EL once (winning 5 out of 6), and come third in CL group, making the EL (with 3:3 draw v Real M). Unfortunately, winter sales caused us to drop out in first knockout round, loosing to Ajax on both occasions. The European ambition is to always make at least the group of EL and compete for places 1-2 in there, or with luck to qualify for CL and fight for 3 spot in the group, so that we survive winter in Europe. It seems, that this year our roster should be strong enough to achieve CL as a more ambitious goal, the only challenge being our coaches small experience, as he is practically a newbie to the business on this level. Legia usually manages to sell some players to Leagues like Serie A, Bundesliga,or Russian League, therefore, it is a good place to build and develop career (examples Bereszynski, Nikolics, Prijovic, Jedrzejczyk, Janusz Goal, Lewczuk etc.). I will continue this in next post...
In Polish Ekstraklasa, Legia is the richest club, with budget roughly 40% higher then the next competitor (Lech Poznan), and Legia is most popular, but also most hated club. In a good year, Legia can have a higher budget then weakest Bundesliga, or League 1 outfits, and is also able to pull solid players out of there (Hlousek, William Remy, Chris Phillips, Vadis Ofoe, Tibon Moulin as examples) and is able to pay its best players between 500K Euro to 900K, which is enough to get some solid veterans from good leagues, or very young prodigies from central European leagues. Legia also has a number of seasoned Polish internationals (Pazdan, Jedrzejczyk, Maczynski) and young prodigies in the roster (Szymanski, Niezgoda, Wieteska). We have won Ekstraklasa 5 times in the last 6 years, and had a number of cup triumphs to it as well, so we can say, that Legia dominated Polish league football for the last 6 years; however, we do not crush the league by 10 points or more (like Celtic for ex) - title is often contested until last game of the season and is being contested by a number of different teams with Lech and Jagiellonia being usual opponents lately, but other teams sometimes joining in, like Lechia, Piast, or Gornik; this means that the league is pretty competitive in itself, with any team being able to beat any other on its day. At the end though, we usually top it
As to Ekstraklasa ranking in Europe: this is a topic for 12 tome discussion we are something like 25 league in Europe, which looking at first is shockingly low. Our league is well organized, with a large TV contract, some of the most modern stadiums in Europe, and with wages able to attract most players from around our region (Czech, Slovak, or Swedish teams would love to have as much cash for wages), and with top games attracting often 30k to 40k spectators. Yet, in the last 5 years all other Polish teams but Legia failed miserably on European stage, performing way below its real abilities. There are a couple of reasons for this, one being, that but Legia and Lech Poznan, all other Polish clubs have absolutely no European ambitions. So clubs like Jagiellonia or Piast would simply sell out some of their best players in early July, go play early qualifying rounds, get knocked out by 3rd qualified round, and then grab some veterans or prodigies from the market in August - this will allow them to compete in Ekstraklasa, but it is too late for Europe... Their calculation works among these lines: making EL group brings about 5 mil Euro. You need to go over 3 or 4 qualified rounds, so there is a risk of failure. Let's sell two or three of our starters to Serie A or Russia or Turkey for 1.5 to 2 mil Euro, and then grab some solid players still without contract in August. We will be competitive in Ekstraklasa by September and Legia busy fighting in Europe at that time won't get away... Also, the fact that we bring different teams to ELQ constantly (Piast, Slask, Jagiellonia, Wisla K) as it is constant rotation, doesn't help is to get consistency and build our points for the league in Europe - only Legia was making any serious points for the league in last 5 years.
@Skandal!!! Is Warsaw a one club city? Do most clubs there have a monopoly in their city? Or is it more like England, with cities as small as Bristol having 2 clubs.
Although there is another historically important club, Polonia Warsaw, currently they are a lower tier, without sponsors... Supporter wise it is like 90% to 10% in the city for Legia, and when looking around Poland, it is even more, so we can safely say, that it is one city one club situation. Out of all large Polish cities, only Lech and Pogon Szczecin would be in this situation. In Krakow, Lodz, Tri City, or Silesia there is much more competition.
Krakow: Wisla vs Cracovia vs Hutnik Tri City: Lechia vs Arka Silesia: Gornik vs Ruch vs Piast vs GKS Katowice vs GKS Tychy vs Polonia Bytom neighbored by Zaglebie region of Sosnowiec (insane competition there!) In top two divisions. Lodz: Widzew v LKS (they are lower leagues now, but I believe within two seasons they will be back). Warsaw: Legia Poznan: Lech (other historic club Warts but what is courious, these two clubs are not antagonistic and support each other!) Szczecin: Pogon Wroclaw: Slask Other cities are way smaller...