Will Borussia miss Piszczek for a long time?
It is no secret that Borussia's right defender and Deutscher Meister Lukasz Piszczek was banned to play for the national squad of Poland for the upcoming six months due to him being involved in a manipulation incident in 2005/2006. What's pretty new is the fact that the Polish football federation now wants to expand the ban to club matches as well which would mean that Borussia would miss Piszczek in Bundesliga and Champions League matches for the entire first half of the season.
Wojciech Petkowicz, speaker of the Polish federation states that the ban should be legal everywhere where he is under contract. While Piszczek has the opportunity to file a protest against the sentence during the next two weeks, BVB manager Hans-Joachim Watzke does not want to comment on the matter. "It is an on-going-process. We will not comment on that in public.", Watzke is quoted in Ruhr Nachrichten. "We have neither fear nor hope." However, Piszczek's fate will be in the hands of the German DFB who would decide if the ban should be expanded or not but it can be questioned if the DFB is willing to step in for a player who had something to do with corruption.
Losing Piszczek with replacement Patrick Owomoyela still out due to an injury would be a tough loss for Borussia since there hardly is no other player being able to step in. Newbie Chris Löwe would be the most likely to make it to the line-up in the worst of all cases. However, it needs to be said that the Polish federation seems to state an example on Piszczek who even pressed charges against himself and was not in the squad of the match being involved in the incident.
Source: Ruhr Nachrichten
Vanni, 16.08.2011
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