WARSAW: Born when independence was just a pipe dream, Polish football has been as much a part of the nation's tortured history as foreign rule, shifting borders and totalitarianism.

When Euro 2012 co-hosts Poland take to the pitch in Warsaw on June 8 to kick off the country's biggest-ever football showcase, they will be keenly aware of the past.

They will aim to repeat the feats of icons Kazimierz Deyna, Zbigniew Boniek Grzegorz Lato and Andrzej Szarmach, whose generation shone at the 1974 and 1982 World Cup, before Poland slid from the spotlight.

But they will also tap roots laid by the mustachioed gentlemen of the Habsburg Empire, who in the late 19th century took to the British-made game with gusto.

Polish football appeared a century after the country was carved up by Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Spread to Vienna by the British, the sport took hold elsewhere in the empire thanks to the Czech-origin Sokol movement, which mixed gymnastics and freedom activism.

Sokol flourished in the Austrian province of Galicia, mainly populated by Poles, Ukrainians and Jews, and split since World War II between Poland and fellow Euro 2012 organiser Ukraine.

Ukrainian Euro host city Lviv, then mainly Polish-populated, saw the first recorded match on July 14, 1894.

Its Sokol members challenged those from fellow Galician metropolis Krakow to an exhibition game that ended after Lviv's sixth-minute goal.

Underscoring the region's complexity, it is remembered both by Poles and Ukrainians, who in 1999 formally declared it the first match on their turf.

While clubs were also born on Russian territory and German-ruled Silesia, football blossomed under the more clement Austrian regime, with teams sometimes having a Polish or Jewish ethnic character.

Poland won freedom as World War I felled its ruling empires.

The conflict also created iconic club Legia Warsaw, founded in 1916 by the Austrian-backed Polish Legion who were fighting Russia.

After independence, plans for a Polish league were hit by war with Bolshevik Russia. It finally saw the light of day in 1921, the year Poland made their international debut, losing 1-0 away to Hungary.

On their 1938 World Cup debut in France, Poland lost 6-5 to Brazil in extra time – with star Ernest Wilimowski scoring four.

Clubs from Krakow, Lviv and the Silesian industrial hub of Chorzow dominated the inter-war league, shattered when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded in 1939. The Nazis murdered Jewish footballers in the Holocaust.

Poles also faced summary execution and, at best, a blanket ban from sport – though the resistance organised secret leagues.

A source of bitterness is that Silesians who declared themselves German – whether willingly or simply to survive – played on.

Wilimowski, who joined Nazi Germany's team, fled to Germany after the war and never returned.

Lviv's Polish clubs were wound up as the city became part of Soviet Ukraine, and its Polish community sent west to replace Germans expelled from territory awarded to Poland by the victorious Allies.

Multiple 1920s champions Pogon Lviv, for example, re-emerged as Pogon Szczecin. After the league was reborn in 1948, Poland's post-war communist regime changed the game.

Clubs were tied to sectors, with Lech Poznan the railways' side, Gornik Zabrze the miners' team and Legia keeping its army links – and an ability to cherry-pick talent among military draftees.

Fittingly, it was a man from Lviv who helped unheralded Poland burst onto the international scene.

Kazimierz Gorski, expelled during the war, played for Legia, then coached Poland's youth teams in the 1950s and 1960s.

Named national manager in 1970, during a six-year reign he crafted a side with passion and skill.

But after “Gorski's Eagles” left the scene, Poland saw a long drought, with the 1986 World Cup their last tournament and a 1992 Olympic silver the only solace.

World Cup qualification in 2002 and 2006, and a debut Euro in 2008, brought only dashed hopes, and Poland have slithered down the FIFA rankings.

Communism's 1989 demise left clubs struggling to adapt to market forces, and the game has faced repeated graft scandals, though hosting Euro 2012 has brought a shake-up on both counts.

But despite 38 million people and a long football tradition, the days when the likes of Gornik could reach a final – losing the 1970 Cup Winners' Cup to Manchester City – seem long gone.