In the case of Marcin Oleksy, the reality beyond his wildest dreams looked like this: leaning on crutches, he stood on stage in full uniform at the FIFA gala summarizing the last year of football. In front of him is the award for the best goal of the year, and he is applauded by the superstars sitting in the front row – Leo Messi and Kylian Mbappé. He lost in this category to Oleksy. And the goal of the year was scored in the championship match between Warta Poznań and Stal Rzeszów. Marcin (Warta) stood in front of the opponent’s penalty area, he received a slightly cut touch from the right wing, the ball flew just high to hit the roller kick. A split second later, the ball, kicked in the air from a height of about one and a half meters, was already floating into the net. And Marcin got up from the field and barely had time to collect his crutches before he drowned in the arms of his friends.

When he started training regularly with the Polkowice football team three years ago (which ultimately did not survive), he made no secret that he was aiming high. – I said in the locker room that I wanted to do something spectacular for this type of football – he remembers. He is not known as the most dangerous or effective striker, and his relatively modest league success in the previous Ekstraklasa season (8 goals; top scorer Bartosz Łastowski scored 27 goals) has was influenced by the fact that he looks for original solutions on the pitch and searches for spectacular goals. Additionally, the Polish national team believed he would be more useful in defense.

The first part of Marcin Oleksy’s football adventure took place in the 4th League Korona Kożuchów. He played there as a goalkeeper and was even called up to the provincial team, but there were no great prospects for sports advancement. Pragmatism has won with football. – I was in my twenties, I met Ewelina, a woman of life.

Original title of the text: “Bulletproof”