The Wisła Kraków story is really fascinating reading from an English point of view, it makes even the most complicated ownership issues here look like a walk in the park!
I believe that the clubs very deep connection to the cities they call home stems from the immediate post-WW2 era and the communist rule meaning clubs couldn't be their own private enterprise as they are elsewhere.
I actually went to a game at Wisła earlier this year, and even with a 30% capacity limit, the place was bouncing and felt very intimidating. There was a heavy police and army presence and everyone's ticket was linked to their ID number, which you were required to bring with you. If the reports on Twitter were correct at the time, the fans reacted to their relegation last season by setting fire to the team coach! People like to praise football on the continent for the atmosphere being significantly better than here, but it does come with a very nasty undercurrent.
And imagine that the Wisła Kraków story is only one of many ridiculous stories regarding club ownership! You often find here that someone will rock up and buy a club for peanuts, because the previous owner has mismanaged things. The home city will bail the team out so they'll start from scratch, then the same thing will happen again and again. Usually the stadiums aren't owned by the teams, but by the home city, so you end up with a situation where the city needs to keep football in the stadium because otherwise they'll be left with a very expensive white elephant on their hands.
Yes, you're right about the structure of the clubs. Usually there were affiliated to a major employer or enterprise, although in some cases, they simply formalised the existing connection. Lech Poznań for instance were affiliated to PKP, Polish State Railways. But this connection existed before WW2 too, just as Legia Warsaw were formally a military club, but this connection was there from the beginning of Polish independence of 1918.
I'd actually say that this system was better than the current one where the teams are highly dependent (with a handful of exceptions) on politicians.
You're right about the nasty undercurrent as well. There was a case last season where the so-called 'fans' demanded the shirts off the backs of the Śląsk Wrocław players, and this has happened before as well. It's shocking for me that the players meekly submitted, but players getting attacked is nothing unusual here. The end result is that many teams struggle to keep foreign players, because no-one wants to play in such a rubbish and threatening environment. You've also got the case that most 'ultras' couldn't even name the players on the team, and they don't have any real interest in what happens on the pitch. There was even a recent case where so-called fans broke into the team bus of Legia Warsaw and attacked the players, which is just absolutely ridiculous.
I don't think much of the atmosphere at games here. It comes across as thuggish and childish, and you don't have any of the wit found in British stadiums.
The way that football clubs were run in the Eastern Bloc was very odd, with various clubs in larger cities becoming the fiefdom of various government departments. Fans of a certain musical group from the Wirral peninsula have a fondness for one of the smaller (these days) clubs based in the Czech capital of Prague, but as this club was under control of the Czechslovakian army during the Communist era, walking around Prague wearing a Dukla Praha away kit can get you some very funny looks!
Half Man Half Biscuit!
Dukla Praha, incidentally, are named after the Battle of Dukla Pass, which is now in Slovakia. Dukla itself is in Poland, adding to the ridiculousness!
