Paweł Janas

Paweł Janas ( [ˈpavɛw ˈjanas] (born March 4, 1953 in Pabianice), is a football manager and former footballer of Polish nationality.

He began his playing career for the Włókniarz Pabianice team in 1965, but later left the club in 1973.

From 1976 to 1984, he won 53 international caps for Poland. Janas played at centre-back in all seven of Poland's games at the 1982 World Cup in Spain where the team achieved an unexpected third place.

Janas' coaching career started as an assistant at Legia Warszawa in 1988. He later ended his work at Legia Warszawa in 1990, and took up a post helping Władysław Stachurski lead the Polish youth squad. He was assistant to Janusz Wójcik at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona where Poland won the silver medal. In the same year he again became Wójcik's assistant, this time at Legia.

From 1994 to 1996, Janas was the head coach at Legia where he and his team won the Championship (1994, 1995), Polish Cup (1994, 1995), Polish Supercup (1994), as well as advanced to the quarter finals of the UEFA Champions' Cup (1995-96 season).

From 1996 to 1999, Janas coached the Polish youth/Olympic squad, which advanced to the quarter finals of the European Championships. From 1999 he worked as the manager and vice-president of sport at Amica Wronki until 2002.

On December 20, 2002, he officially took charge of the Polish national team. He was heavily criticized in the beginning of his national team spell, despite achieving good results. Nonetheless, under Janas the Poland team qualified for the 2006 World Cup, finishing second in a qualifying group behind England. They qualified as the best second placed team, scoring 27 goals in the qualifiers, 10 more than the group leaders England.

In the final tournament, Poland were drawn with Ecuador, hosts Germany and Costa Rica. Their first game, against Ecuador in Gelsenkirchen, ended in a disappointing 2-0 defeat, and Janas received criticism from the Polish press for his team selection and tactics, which involved leaving striker Maciej Zurawski alone and unsupported up front. He played a 4-5-1 formation, which he said "safety first". Poland played well with 4-4-2 in the qualifers, which resulted in flowing football.

Poland played much better in their second game, against the Germans in Dortmund, but again lost, this time 1-0 to a late goal by Oliver Neuville, despite a magnificent performance by their goalkeeper Artur Boruc. This meant that the third match, against Costa Rica in Hamburg, was meaningless; Poland won 2-1 with two goals by defender Bartosz Bosacki.

Janas was sacked from his post by the Polish FA after the tournament.

Since June 2007 Paweł Janas is a sports director of Polish football team Korona Kielce.

He will also be remembered as the coach who refused to consider Polish-born Bundesliga footballer Lukas Podolski for the Poland national team in 2003 when the young striker was noticed by the Polish press. Podolski, who had been interested in playing for his country of birth at the time, later made the German senior squad, was voted Best Young Player of the 2006 World Cup, and scored both goals in Germany's 2-0 defeat of Poland in Euro 2008.