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<\/p>\nEver heard the story about the guy who scored four goals in one World Cup match against Brazil? Or the one about the player with the greatest goals-to-games scoring ratio in World Cup history? And the chap who held a World Cup goalscoring record for 56 years?<\/p>\n
All of the above were achieved by one man, but the chances are you may be unaware of his existence.<\/p>\n
This is a player who once scored 10 goals in a match, who still holds the record for the most goals scored in a German Cup season and could (although records vary) have netted 1,000 times during his remarkable career.<\/p>\n
The story is a complicated one of split nationalities, contested myths and divided loyalties.<\/p>\n
His name is Ernst Wilimowski. And even that is disputed.<\/p>\n
Poland played in only one World Cup match between 1930 and 1970.<\/p>\n
They have since featured in eight World Cups, playing 37 games with the likes of the great Grzegorz Lato, Zbigniew Boniek and Robert Lewandowski in their ranks.<\/p>\n
Yet only three players have scored more goals for Poland at World Cups than Wilimowski, despite him making only one appearance.<\/p>\n
It came in 1938 and was the high point of his remarkable career, when he scored four times in an incredible match against Brazil, which the South Americans won 6-5 after extra time. And yet Wilimowski is not a celebrated name or figure in Poland because of his links to Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Brazil score their sixth goal against Poland in the 1938 World Cup (Staff\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Wilimowski was born in 1916 into a family and an area where national identity was complex.<\/p>\n
His mother was German, he grew up speaking German and he was born in Katowice, a German-ruled city in Silesia.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, Silesia is mostly situated in south-west Poland and small parts of the Czech Republic and Germany. For the first five years of Wilimowski\u2019s life,\u00a0Upper Silesia was German territory, before being transferred to Poland after the First World War in 1921.<\/p>\n
Silesia became part of Germany again under the Third Reich in 1939 and then part of Poland again after the Second World War.<\/p>\n
Add in the fact Wilimowski\u2019s father was killed fighting for Germany and then his stepfather (who adopted him and gave him the name Wilimowski) was involved in Polish-backed Silesian insurgencies, and the cultural intricacies of this player\u2019s disputed career become obvious.<\/p>\n
To add to those intricacies, Wilimowski was thought to be primarily loyal to Silesia; he spoke the language and played for teams in the territory, which was stateless but had its own culture.<\/p>\n
What isn\u2019t disputed, however, is Wilimowski\u2019s extraordinary footballing ability.<\/p>\n
He mostly played as a right-footed, left-sided forward but, so much better was Wilimowski than many of his team-mates, he often just drifted where he wanted, using his lightning pace, famous close control and, most importantly, explosive and utterly prolific finishing ability.<\/p>\n
Having scored for fun at youth level, his rise was rapid. He made his senior league debut for Ruch Wielkie Hajduki (now known as Ruch Chorzow) in April 1934 and a month later was in the Poland squad, aged 17.<\/p>\n
He won the Polish golden boot twice before he was 20 years old, scoring 34 goals in 21 appearances to lead Ruch to the title in his first full season.<\/p>\n
In total he would score 113 goals in 86 league matches for Ruch, who became the best team in Poland during this period, with Wilimowski winning three more league titles.<\/p>\n
There were 14 hat-tricks in the league (and 35 in all competitions) while, in one match against Union Touring Lodz, he scored 10. Yes, 10 \u2013 in May 1939.<\/p>\n
The suggestion that, after scoring the first three of his 10 goals before half-time, Wilimowski wagered a gold watch with a fan in the stands that he would score another seven goals in the second half is probably a myth.<\/p>\n
Or is it? There are a number of myths and legends surrounding Wilimowski, both good and bad, that are hard to verify or disprove.<\/p>\n
Did he once score a hat-trick in just two minutes? Did he have six toes on his right foot? Was he always the last player to leave the field because he wanted to continuously take the acclaim of the crowd? Did he once get so drunk after a match he signed three professional contracts on the spot?<\/p>\n
And was he suspended by the Polish national team for being drunk during a Ruch match?<\/p>\n
Wilimowski certainly denied the latter, believing he was the victim of an anti-Silesian witch hunt, but the suspension definitely happened and caused him to miss the 1936 Olympic football tournament in Germany, in which Poland finished fourth.<\/p>\n
Some of those suggestions, including that of Wilimowski regularly being accused of being a cocky, overconfident individual who produced circus tricks with the ball rather than playing for the team, are also difficult to judge owing to the retrospective rewriting of Wilimowski\u2019s career and life because of what happened next.<\/p>\n
He was a Polish hero for his phenomenal exploits in two of the most revered matches in the country\u2019s football history, even now.<\/p>\n
The first came in the 1938 World Cup in France. A straight knockout competition featuring 16 teams for the second World Cup running, Poland were drawn against Brazil.<\/p>\n
He scored four times in a 6-5 defeat, his only World Cup appearance. For context, no player scored more than four until Russia\u2019s Oleg Salenko netted five in 1994 against Cameroon. Wilimowski retains, by a distance, the best scoring ratio of any player who has appeared at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond any doubt, he was the best Polish footballer in history,\u201d the late journalist Andrzej Gowarzewski once said<\/a>. \u201cPerhaps if the 1942 World Cup had taken place, we wouldn\u2019t be talking about Pele today, but about him.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilimowski\u2019s incessant running at a terrified Brazil defence also won a penalty scored by his team-mate Fritz Scherfke.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone says Poles can\u2019t play football, I\u2019ll spit in their face,\u201d Brazilian midfielder Martim Silveira reportedly said<\/a> after the game.<\/p>\n Poland were a growing force in world football and Wilimowski was their star.<\/p>\n Italy would beat Hungary 4-2 in the 1938 final in Paris and, to prove their potential once more, Poland beat the Hungarians by the same scoreline a year later in Warsaw.<\/p>\n They came from 2-0 down, with Wilimowski scoring a hat-trick, confirming his status as a national hero. He was carried from the field by jubilant supporters, having reached 21 goals in just 22 appearances for the team.<\/p>\n It was regarded as the country\u2019s finest footballing moment at the time. Yet the match is also known in Poland as The Last Game<\/a>. It took place in August 1939 and, just weeks later, came the German invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War. Wilimowski\u2019s life would never be the same again.<\/p>\n He and his fellow Silesians were given the impossible decision of siding with their Polish or German allegiances. Wilimowski elected for German citizenship, as many did, a decision that was a legitimate way to merely survive, but also led to him receiving privileges as part of the Volksdeutsche (someone who has a German cultural background).<\/p>\n It also meant he could continue playing football, while he changed his name from Ernest Wilimowski to Ernst Willimowski (two Ls), moving to the German state of Saxony.<\/p>\n He went on to play for 1860 Munich, scoring 14 goals as they won the German Cup in 1942 (a goalscoring record that stands to this day). He also accepted a call to play for Germany.<\/p>\n The national team continued to play against occupied or neutral countries during the Second World War for Nazi propaganda purposes and their new striker was predictably prolific, scoring 13 goals in just eight matches, including four in a 5-3 victory over Switzerland in 1942, the year fixtures eventually stopped.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s star, Fritz Walter, reportedly said<\/a> of his team-mate: \u201cHe\u2019s probably the only player in the world who scored more goals than he had a chance to score.\u201d<\/p>\n He even played for Germany in his Upper Silesia homeland, scoring once in a 7-0 win over Romania with more than 50,000 people said to be in attendance to watch Wilimowski, even with a swastika now on his shirt.<\/p>\n His association with the Nazi regime, which some believe occurred only because he was pressured to play to secure the release of his mother from Auschwitz, forever tainted Wilimowski. After the war, his goalscoring statistics were deleted and his achievements were discredited, with the Polish press labelling him as mentally unstable and an alcoholic. He was shunned by his homeland and called a traitor.<\/p>\n He lived out the rest of his days in West Germany, where he continued playing football for some years, mostly at lower-league clubs. He died in 1997, aged 81.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the Polish perspective, he was of course a traitor. He betrayed Poland,\u201d Zbigniew Rokita, a Polish writer and Silesia native, told The New York Times<\/a> last year. \u201cBut from the perspective of his family and society, the judgment is different.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilimowski\u2019s legacy is a complicated one. The decisions he made are impossible for us to judge in 2026, not knowing the conditions he lived in at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Polish press in Warsaw called him a Nazi, the German press called him a \u2018Polack\u2019,\u201d Chorzow city councillor Grzegorz Joszko also told The New York Times, referring to the derogatory term for a person of Polish descent. \u201cHow can we say whether he felt more Polish or more German or more Silesian? Or was he just a man trying to survive the war?\u201d<\/p>\n Even the name on his Karlsruhe gravestone, Ernst Wilimowski, is controversial, given it eschews his original Polish forename of Ernest and his later German surname of Willimowski.<\/p>\n In the city of Chorzow, in the Silesian highlands, you will find the most love for Wilimowski, with a mural dedicated to him and a youth football tournament named after him<\/a>.<\/p>\n