Former Leeds United man Pawel Cibicki has admitted his problems started at Elland Road, where he went “completely off the rails.”
Fotboll Skanalen cover comments from the 30-year-old today made to Aftonbladet as he continues to serve a ban for match fixing.
The forward was sentenced to a four-year ban by FIFA and the Swedish Football Association in 2021 after being found guilty of receiving an intentional yellow card in a clash between Elfsborg and Kalmar in 2019.
He took the case to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, although the latter denied to review the case and upheld the punishment.
He’s been laying low since that point, speaking to the media a few times in the years since as various details have emerged about a career that spiralled out of control.
A move to Leeds in August 2017 has often been pinpointed as the start of his problems, with Cibicki himself admitting he could spend the wages he was earning at Elland Road in 4-5 days at one point.
Having so much money following a career in Sweden up to that point seemed to be something he couldn’t deal with, and he’s reiterated that point again, admitting to spending 200,000 kroner a month in an hour.
“I have done it; I have 100% done it. I deserved to be punished, and I can’t escape that,” he said regarding his ban.
“When I was alone there in England, everything went completely off the rails. I was getting a little over 200,000 kroner a month from Leeds – they could be gone in an hour. There was no limit.”
“I don’t know what was going on in my head – I guess I just thought: “What could possibly happen? Who’s going to see a yellow card?”. So, I told him: “I drive, I do it,” he added regarding his decision to accept a bribe to match fix.
“The sick thing is that it didn’t even feel like anything special. I didn’t even think about it, it just came automatically. But then inside the dressing room, I received a text message with a champagne emoji like this from the guy I had been talking to. And then it was like it hit me: “I actually did it. It’s true, it happened.”
