First step the hardest?

We picked three different homegrown players who differ in age and, therefore, have joined the senior team at a different time. However, there is one thing all three have in common – their position on the pitch. As strikers, it would seem natural to take a close look at their goal-scoring statistics in Lech’s reserves, but the history of the B team has shown it’s not that easy.

It’s common for the shining stars of the Older Juniors team to be promoted to Lech’s B squad. In the case of all three strikers, it was exactly the same. Paweł Tomczyk was the first one to be noticed by the reserves coaches and at the age of 18, he joined Lech’s B team. At the end of the 2015/16 season, Ivan Djurdjević let the youngster appear on the pitch five times and during the 150 minutes spent on the field, he beat the goalkeeper twice. This promising achievement was an accurate forecast of what was to come.

In the following campaign, Lech actively engaged in the fight for the league title thanks to Tomczyk who scored regularly. In the clash with Świt Skolwin, he found the back of the net four times, managed to get three doubles in the following games, in total scoring 20 times over the span of the season which gave him the third rank in the goal scorers table. His impressive performances earned him a loan to second-division Podbeskidzie Bielsko-Biała.

Hubert Sobol got 25 caps in reserves during the initial period of his professional football career. He was slightly younger than Tomczyk – 17 years old – when he was first introduced to senior football. Even though he needed eight games to score his first goal, in the 2017/18 campaign he scored three times. In the following, successful season which finished with the reserves promotion to a higher division, Sobol found the back of the net 10 times in 11 matches. In the winter transfer window, the young striker joined Warta Poznań, however, the impact of his statistics on reserves’ promotion was indisputable.

Filip Szymczak also had a positive influence on Lech’s B team success. He was asked to join the reserves very early – at the age of 16.5 – and he was a full-time member of the B squad when the team won promotion to the higher division. Szymczak even scored an impressive goal against Chemik Bydgoszcz (4:0) in that same campaign. However, he wasn’t a regular member of the reserves’ starting line-up until a few months ago. His transition to senior football was more challenging than Sobol’s and Tomczyk’s not only because of his age, but also because the third division meant more difficult rivals. Regardless, the 2002-born striker has already managed to beat the third-league keepers four times and has been making significant progress.