Tomasz Karol Kędziora ( ; born 11 June 1994) is a Polish professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who plays as a defender for

Super League Greece The Super League Greece 1 (), or Stoiximan Super League for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Greece and the highest level of the Greek football league system. The league was formed on 16 July 2006 and repla ...

club

PAOK PAOK (, Πανθεσσαλονίκειος Αθλητικός Όμιλος Κωνσταντινοπολιτών, ''Panthessalonikeios Athlitikós Ómilos Constantinopoliton'', ''Pan-Thessalonian Athletic Club of Constantinopolitans''), commonly ...

and the Poland national team

Club career

Early career

At the age of four, Tomasz Karol Kędziora started attending the youth academy of the

UKP Zielona Góra UKP may refer to: * Ukrainian Communist Party * Pound sterling Sterling (symbol: £; currency code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound is the main unit of sterling, and the word ...

. He was being trained at the time by his father, Mirosław. In July 2010, he took part as an UKP Zielona Góra player in the final tournament of the Polish Junior Championships. The team won the bronze medal, coached by Tomasz Kędziora's father.

Lech Poznań

Before the start of the 2010–11 Ekstraklarsa, Kędziora signed for reigning Polish champions

Lech Poznań Kolejowy Klub Sportowy Lech Poznań S.A., commonly referred to as KKS Lech Poznań or simply Lech Poznań (), is a Polish professional football club based in Poznań and currently competing in the Ekstraklasa, the nation's highest division. ...

. Initially a player of the Junior Ekstraklasa Lech team, he played 20 matches and scored two goals in the 2010–11 season. In the 2011–12 Ekstraklarsa, he was placed in the first team, but continued to perform only in the Junior Ekstraklasa, having 20 appearances and scoring seven goals (including five from penalties). On 20 September 2011, Kędziora was included in Lech Poznań's squad for the 1/16

Polish Cup The Polish Cup in Association football, football ( ) is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout football competition for Polish football club (association football), football clubs, held continuously since 1950, and is the second most i ...

final against

Chrobry Głogów Chrobry Głogów () is a Polish football club based in Głogów, Poland. It was founded in 1946. The team's official colors are blue, orange, black and green. Chrobry currently competes in I liga, the second tier of Polish league football. The cl ...

, but he did not play. On 21 June 2012, Kędziora signed a new three-year contract with the Poznań club, which went until 30 June 2015. Kędziora made his first team debut on 12 July 2012 in a 1–1 draw of the first qualifying round of the Europa League with Kazakh football club

FC Zhetysu Jetisu Taldykorgan (, ''Jetisu Taldyqorǵan Futbol Kluby'') is a Football in Kazakhstan, Kazakh professional football (soccer), football club based at the Zhetysu stadium in Taldykorgan. They are a founding member of the Kazakhstan Premier League ...

, entering at the 90th minute for Bartosz Ślusarski. On 27 October 2012, Kędziora made his

Ekstraklasa (; meaning "Extra Class" in Polish), officially known as PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa due to its Sponsor (commercial), sponsorship by PKO Bank Polski, is a professional association football league in Poland and the highest level of the Polish foo ...

debut in the 2–0 defeat against

Jagiellonia Białystok Jagiellonia Białystok () is a Polish professional football club based in Białystok that plays in the Ekstraklasa, the top level of Polish football. The club was founded in 1920 by soldiers in the 42nd Infantry Regiment Reserve Battalion in Bi ...

in the 9th round, replacing Hubert Wołąkiewicz in the 62nd minute. On 20 September 2013, during the 8th round of the Ekstraklasa with

Pogoń Szczecin Pogoń Szczecin Spółka Akcyjna, commonly referred to as Pogoń Szczecin (), is a Polish professional football club based in Szczecin, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, which plays in the Ekstraklasa, the top tier of the national football league s ...

, he suffered an injury to his thigh muscle and returned on 13 December for the 21st match against

Zawisza Bydgoszcz Zawisza Bydgoszcz () is a sports club from Bydgoszcz, Poland, founded in 1946. Its name commemorates a legendary Polish 15th-century knight, Zawisza Czarny (Zawisza the Black). The club holds many sections: football, track and field athletics, b ...

. On 5 May 2014, he scored his first goal in the Polish top-flight in a 2–1 win in the 32nd round against Zawisza Bydgoszcz. Kędziora signed a new three-year contract with Lech on 1 November 2015, effective until 30 June 2018. In the 2014–15 season, he won the Polish title with the team, appearing in 35 matches, scoring three goals and having six assists.

Dynamo Kyiv

On 11 July 2017, Kędziora signed a four-year contract with Ukrainian club

Dynamo Kyiv The Football Club 'Dynamo Kyiv', also known as Dynamo Kyiv, or simply Dynamo, ( ) is a Ukrainian professional football club based in Kyiv. Founded in 1927 as a Kyivan football team of republican branch of the bigger Soviet Dynamo Sports Society ...

Return to Lech Poznań

On 7 March 2022,

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

announced that due to the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, all contracts of foreign players in Ukraine were suspended until 30 June and they were allowed to sign with clubs outside Ukraine until the latter date, with the transfer window being reopened for such players to sign and get registered for the new club until 7 April. On 17 March, Kędziora returned to

until the end of the season under that condition.

PAOK

On 29 January 2023, Kędziora joined Greek club

on loan until the end of the season. It was extended for another twelve months on 11 July 2023. On 10 July 2024, Kędziora terminated his contract with Dynamo by mutual consent. Three days later, he moved to PAOK on a permanent basis, signing a two-year deal with an option for a further year.

International career

Kędziora got his first call-up to the senior

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

squad for friendly matches against

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and

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

in June 2015. He debuted against

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on 13 November 2017. In May 2018, he was named in Poland’s preliminary 35-man squad for the

2018 FIFA World Cup The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national association football, football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded t ...

, but did not make the final 23.

Career statistics

Club

International

:''Scores and results list Poland's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Kędziora goal.''

Honours

Lech Poznań *

: 2014–15, 2021–22 *

Polish Super Cup The Polish Super Cup (, ) is an annually held match between the champions of the Ekstraklasa and the Polish Cup winners or, if the Ekstraklasa champions also win the Polish Cup, the Cup's runners-up. As of 2024, the Polish Super Cup has been ...

2015 2015 was designated by the United Nations as: * International Year of Light * International Year of Soil __TOC__ Events January * January 1 – Lithuania officially adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas, and becomes ...

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

Dynamo Kyiv *

Ukrainian Premier League The Ukrainian Premier League ( ) or UPL is a professional association football league in Ukraine and the highest level of the Ukrainian football league system. Originally known as the Vyshcha Liha ( , ) it was formed in 1991 during the 1992 in ...

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

Ukrainian Cup The Ukrainian Cup ( ) is an association football national knockout cup competition run by the Ukrainian Association of Football. The competition is conducted almost exclusively among professional clubs. Since the 2003–04 season, the Cup winner qu ...

: 2019–20,

Ukrainian Super Cup The Ukrainian Super Cup () is an association football game of the Ukrainian Premier League in traditional super cup format that acts as the grand-opening for every new football (soccer), football competition season in Ukraine. Originally it was s ...

2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

2020 The year 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of even ...

PAOK *

: 2023–24

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kedziora, Tomasz 1994 births Living people People from Sulechów Footballers from Lubusz Voivodeship Polish men's footballers Men's association football defenders Poland men's international footballers Poland men's youth international footballers Poland men's under-21 international footballers Ekstraklasa players Ukrainian Premier League players Super League Greece players UEFA Euro 2020 players Lech Poznań II players Lech Poznań players FC Dynamo Kyiv players PAOK FC players Polish expatriate men's footballers Polish expatriate sportspeople in Ukraine Expatriate men's footballers in Ukraine Polish expatriate sportspeople in Greece Expatriate men's footballers in Greece 21st-century Polish sportsmen