Hajduk Faces IT Millionaire's Club
Rakow from Częstochowa was built by Michał Świerczewski, a man who turned a small computer shop into an IT empire and fulfilled a childhood dream of taking over the club.
Rakow from Częstochowa was built by Michał Świerczewski, a man who turned a small computer shop into an IT empire and fulfilled a childhood dream of taking over the club.
In recent times, Poland's Rakow has regularly competed for the top of local football, and its rise is linked to the unusual story of Michał Świerczewski, an IT millionaire who, as a young fan, promised himself he would one day take over the club. Now his club stands in the way of Hajduk in a European clash, and the story gains an extra dimension as Hajduk's current sporting director, Robert Graf, knows Rakow from the inside.
The story begins in June 1998, when the club from Częstochowa was being relegated from the Polish top flight. In the stands was 19-year-old Świerczewski. He later told Forbes that after the last home match, he saw disappointed and tearful fans, and he set himself an unusual life goal: to build a company big enough so that one day he could take over Rakow and run the club himself.
Four years later, in 2002, Świerczewski opened a small computer shop in Częstochowa. From this grew x-kom, which ranks among Poland's largest companies selling computers and consumer electronics, particularly strong in online sales. The growth was massive: in 2020 alone, x-kom recorded revenues of approximately 2.5 billion zlotys and a net profit of nearly 100 million zlotys.
In 2022, Forbes estimated Świerczewski's wealth at 1.674 billion zlotys, placing him 38th on the list of Poland's richest people, while a year later his fortune was estimated at just over one billion zlotys.
Świerczewski did not hide that he tries to run football with a long-term perspective, similar to a company. Even before taking over, he prepared a multi-year development plan for Rakow with specific deadlines, not just general goals like "we want to improve." One of these was a return to the Ekstraklasa in 2019, which the club achieved exactly then.
First, he financially supported the club as a sponsor for several years, while learning how a football club operates. In late 2014 or early 2015, he took control of Rakow, which was then in the third tier of Polish football and had serious financial difficulties. According to Forbes, its liabilities were more than double the value of its assets.
One of the key decisions was hiring Marek Papszun in 2016, now one of Poland's most renowned coaches, whom Świerczewski brought in while Rakow was still in the third division. Papszun worked for years as both a coach and a school teacher of history and physical education. Under his leadership, Rakow won the Polish Cup in 2021 and 2022, two Super Cups, and the pinnacle came in 2023 when they secured the first league title in the club's history.
The whole story gains a particularly interesting dimension ahead of the clash with Hajduk. Robert Graf, currently Hajduk's sporting director, built his career precisely at Rakow. He arrived in Częstochowa in 2021 and took on the role of sporting director, where he stayed until 2023. This indicates that Graf was part of Rakow's sporting team during the period when the club won the league title, the national cup, and the Polish Super Cup. Hajduk appointed him as their sporting director in April 2026.
Rakow is not a Polish giant with a lavish history. Its current position stems from an endeavor that one fan began planning at the end of the last century, then developed a large IT business and transferred part of that business model to his club. Świerczewski achieved what he had set out to do long ago, and now his team aims to end Hajduk's hopes of European participation.
