Śląsk Wrocław U19

The 2011-12 Ekstraklasa title arrived 35 years after the first one. Śląsk had won the league in 1976-77, taken the Polish Cup the season before that, then spent decades outside the conversation. The second championship came with the Super Cup that followed it.

The senior side dates to 1947, when two clubs, Pionier and Podchorążak, merged. Green, white and red have stayed the colours since.

The under-19 side plays in the Central Youth League, a 16-team competition that pulls in the academies of Legia, Wisła and Jagiellonia. Śląsk have been in it a short time — long enough for a couple of full seasons, not long enough for anything to have settled. Finishes have swung between mid-table and the lower reaches, which is roughly what a squad of 24 to 27 players with an average age just over 17 tends to produce: a group that turns over every summer and rarely holds the same shape for two months running.

What the league gives the club is a fixture list against the country's best-funded academies, played weekly rather than in tournament bursts. A Legia fixture in October and a Wisła fixture in March are the same clubs the graduates will meet later, in front of the crowd that turned up for the 2012 side.