Polish striker Pawel Cibicki has again admitted he made a mistake joining Leeds United and should have gone to Spain instead.
Sportbladet have an interview with the 30-year-old today in which he again admits moving to Leeds was when his career really spiralled out of control.
The Swedish forward is still serving a four-year ban for gambling offences after deliberately taking a yellow card in a clash between Elfsborg and Kalmar in 2019.
That brought an end to a career that had seen him play in Sweden with Malmo, move to England with Leeds, as well as a loan spell at Ado Den Haag in the Netherlands and then Pogon Szczecin in Poland before he was eventually banned.
He’s now dealt with his gambling addiction and wants to speak frankly about the matter, and where it went wrong for him.
In comments over the weekend, he highlighted his €1.6m move to Leedds in August 2017 as the real catalyst for the problem, explaining how the big wages he found himself on at Elland Road only helped to fuel more, and worse, gambling habits.
In hindsight the move was a disaster for him and one he shouldn’t have made, something he now sees, admitting he wishes he’d gone to Spain instead.
“If that shot had gone in, I would have ended up in the Premier League straight away,” he said, remembering a strike against England in the U21 European Championship which nearly won his side the tournament.
“Instead, I had to choose between Leeds and Leganés. I should have obviously chosen Spain and La Liga – that’s much more my kind of football – but Leeds ended up there.
“Gambling was about to take over completely, and my girlfriend at the time didn’t want to follow me into professional life, she wanted to stay in Sweden. And when I was left alone there in England, everything went completely off the rails. I was getting a little over 200,000 kronor a month from Leeds – that could be gone in an hour. There was no limit.
“Then I borrowed. I was good at talking, and since new money was always coming in, I could afford to be generous. If I borrowed 20,000 one month, I would return 40,000 the next. There was always some bonus or something from Leeds, and money had completely lost its value to me at this time. It was zero, just air.”
