Widzew Ii

Widzew Łódź II closed the 2024–25 season top of the IV liga Łódź group, a promotion in name only since the reserve side cannot move up regardless of where it finishes — the trophy went into the cabinet anyway, alongside the Łódź Voivodeship Cup won the year before. Both prizes belong to the fourth tier and the regional cup, not to the Ekstraklasa the first team once ruled, but for a team built to develop players rather than climb, that is the point.

The reserve side was assembled in 2015, when RTS Widzew Łódź went bankrupt and the club had to be rebuilt from an association upward; the second team took its place in the IV liga that same season, several rungs below where Widzew had spent the 1980s winning championships. It carries the parent club's colours and its nickname, Red Army, without carrying its history — no Polish Cup run, no European nights, just league football in Łódź played in front of whatever crowd the derby with ŁKS pulls across town, since that fixture still stirs the city even when it is the first team, not the reserves, taking the pitch.

Home games are played at Stadion Widzewa, known locally as the Heart of Łódź, a 18,018-seat ground the reserve team shares with the senior side. What the shirt is really for shows in the names who wore an earlier version of it on the way up: Włodzimierz Smolarek came through the Widzew academy before his career carried him to two World Cups, and his son Euzebiusz followed the same path out of Łódź. The current crop plays for a place on that list more than for a place in III liga.