Polish FA chief faces revolt over graft

The boss of Poland's PZPN football association Grzegorz Lato on Wednesday faced mounting calls to step down, with rebels mustering support to force him from the job even as Euro 2012 looms. The iconic former international footballer's management style has ruffled feathers since he was elected head of the PZPN in 2008, but opponents have stepped up their fight amid a corruption scandal in which he denies any involvement. The PZPN board is to meet on Thursday, when 61-year-old Lato's adversaries hope to push through a resolution to call an extraordinary congress that could oust him. They need a two-thirds majority of 12 votes. "We have 10 votes for sure, out of the 17 on the board. Four people are wavering," Kazimierz Gren, who heads the local football association in the southeastern Carpathian region, told Poland's PAP news agency. Lato - who was capped over 100 times and starred in the World Cups where Poland finished third in 1974 and 1982 - had been seen as capable of turning the page after the PZPN congress in 2008 axed its former leadership following government pressure over corruption. Gren, who helped run his successful election campaign, later fell out with Lato over his alleged failure to shake things up and a lack of transparency. Gren said he rated the rebels' chance of success on Thursday. "You can see with the naked eye that there isn't just a small crack, but a great big one. The concrete's crumbling," he said. "Concrete" is Polish jargon for an old guard, coined by opponents of the apparatchiks who ruled the roost until the communist regime fell in 1989. But board member Zbigniew Lach said he did not believe it would vote to call a congress as Poland and neighbouring Ukraine brace to hold the European championships in June. "It would be a disgrace for Polish football," he warned. The revolt has been rumbling since November, when a leaked recording linked to a purported bribery attempt led to the sacking of the PZPN secretary general, Zdzislaw Krecina, who had been at the association since the 1980s. Grzegorz Kulikowski, a businessman once close to Lato, was behind the leak. He returned to the fray this month, claiming he had wanted to test Lato and Krecina by slipping them an unspecified sum of his own money, pretending it was from another individual who wanted to sell the PZPN land for its new offices. "It was a set-up, to see if they'd take it. And they took it," Kulikowski claimed. Lato rubbished that, saying that Kulikowski had left an "envelope" but that he never opened it, put it in the PZPN safe and took legal advice, filing a criminal complaint in January. Since 2005, Polish football's image has been tarnished by repeated corruption cases, largely over match-fixing. Over 600 individuals have been jailed or are being prosecuted - including players, referees, club officials and middle-men - and a handful of clubs from various divisions have been relegated as punishment.