By Andrew Warshaw
October 29 – Polish Sports Minister Joanna Mucha is keeping her job despite offering her resignation over the embarrassing postponement of the recent FIFA World Cup qualifier with England.
Mucha insisted at the time that she could do nothing to prevent the authorities deciding against closing the roof at the state-of-the-art national stadium in Warsaw when torrential rain made the surface unplayable but that she felt “politically responsible for the situation”.
FIFA ordered that the match, originally scheduled for October 16, should be played the next day but the debacle sparked a wave of criticism from fans and pundits and prompted Prime Minister Donald Tusk to vow to punish those responsible.
But Tusk said Mucha was not directly responsible.
“I deem accepting of the resignation as unjustified,” he said.
“There were too many hosts and nobody accepted the responsibility to take a final decision…there was a lack of imagination.”
The Group H game ended in a 1-1 draw but thousands of angry England fans complained they couldn’t afford to stay on for the rescheduled game.
“I suffered as every other fan that evening,” said Tusk, a passionate football enthusiast who still plays the game regularly.
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