Poland's former coach Gorski dies at 85
Gorski, who coached Poland's soccer team to the gold medal in the 1972 Olympics and third place at the 1974 World Cup, died in Warsaw.
Kazimierz Gorski, who coached Poland's soccer team to the gold medal in the 1972 Olympics and third place at the 1974 World Cup, died early on Tuesday. He was 85.
Gorski, who had been battling cancer for years, died in a Warsaw hospital, Polish Soccer Federation spokesman Michal Kocieba said.
Poland's parliament held a minute of silence on Tuesday morning in tribute to Gorski, whose national team reached its peak under his guidance in the 1970s.
Poland won the Olympic title in Munich in 1972 and a silver medal four years later in Montreal. Gorski guided the team to a third-place finish at the 1974 World Cup in Germany, where the Poles defeated defending champion Brazil.
"We knew that he was in bad condition, but we had hoped he would make it to watch the World Cup matches with us" next month in Germany, Grzegorz Lato, a star on the 1974 squad, said.
Gorski was credited with nurturing talented young players, including Lato, Kazimierz Deyna, Wlodzimierz Lubanski and Jan Tomaszewski.
Born March 2, 1921 in Lviv, now in the Ukraine, Gorski began his soccer career as a player in the 1930s for RKS Lviv, playing until the start of World War II. After the war, he played for CWKS Legia, now renamed Legia Warsaw.
Gorski became the national coach in 1971, a position he held for five years.
From 1991-1995, Gorski was a chairman of the Polish Soccer Federation.
His wife Maria died in 2005.
