'One day he will play for Real Madrid': Giallorossi sign Polish giant

 ROME - Jan Ziolkowski was not born with a ball between his feet, but instead with a tatami mat beneath him. His father, a martial arts master and founder of a training school in Warsaw, raised him through discipline, sacrifice and respect for the rules. At almost two meters tall, with a slim build and a determined gaze, Ziolkowski is the new face of AS Roma’s defence, reports Il Fatto Quotidiano.

 The Giallorossi community have torn apart the competition of Lione and Udinese at the end of a long negotiation during almost a month: Frederic Massara has finally delivered the Pole to the court of Gian Piero Gasperini. The Giallorossi have thus decided to invest in him: six million euros plus bonuses to Legia Warsaw, where the boy from 2005 grew up, step by step, through hard work and prophecy.

 One of these has accompanied him for years: “One day he will play for Real Madrid,” his former coach at Polonia Warsaw, Michal Libich, said about him (at only 15 years old). Words that make you smile, but that bring to mind the predictions that José Mourinho made for Dean Huijsen, who today actually has embarked for the Bernabéu. Yet, at the beginning, Ziolkowski’s destination seemed written elsewhere.

 His heroes were not footballers, but fighters: Jan Maciej Blachowicz, a UFC champion, and Mamed Chalidov, a legend of Polish martial arts. He played football, but initially it was only a passion fed by his support for Legia (whose stadium rose up only a few paces from the hospital where he was born) and from the poster of the ex-captain of Turin, Kamil Glik, hung in his room. Then, at 15 years old, it was Libich who urged him on. He looked him in the eyes and told him: “You remind me of Bednarek. You have everything required to become a great defender.” Those demonstrations of appraisal would change his life.

 Legia welcomed him at 17 years old. The impact was not simple: the expectations were huge, the pressures suffocating. “It was hard work, to begin with. He was often put in the second team. He was behind compared to his teammates, but we gave him a nice motivational injection,” remembered his coach in the youth teams at Legia. Ziolkowski didn’t give up. Patiently he made his mark in the third division and brick by brick he built his career.

 Today, at 20 years old, he already has important experience: 22 appearances in Ekstraklasa (Polish Football League), a goal, two assists, six appearances in the Conference League and the experience of the preliminaries of the Europa League. In the Under 20 national team, he has already left his mark with five appearances and a goal. And last year Libich piled it on. On the website przegladsportowy.onet.pl he said: “He is as good as Cubarsí.”

 On the pitch Ziolkowski is a giant of rare elegance. Despite his slender frame – 80 kilos spread over almost two meters of height – he knows how to impose himself in the penalty area, as much in defence as in attack. He has good technique, positional awareness and a remarkable skill: reading in advance the balls trajectory. “He understands where the ball will fall before others do,” revealed Iordanescu, his former coach at Legia Warsaw.

 If there is a flaw, it is his impetuosity: 8 bookings in 19 league matches is a figure to improve. But he certainly has time to improve. Now that the next step brought him to Rome, where Gasperini awaits to transform him from a promise to a certainty. He is not just an immediate reinforcement: Ziolkowski also represents an investment for the future. And the future, as he has learnt already upon the tatami, is built with discipline, sacrifice and a pinch of prophecy.

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