Leszek Rylski, 92, leans forward in his chair and with his forefinger traces the names on a list of footballers.
Leszek Rylski, 92, who played in a secret football league in Poland during World War II, when the occupying Nazi Germans banned Poles from sport or any other form of organised activity, posing in Warsaw.
It's stark reading.
"Zbikowski, a defender, shot. The Izydorzaks, strikers, both died in the camps. Ostrowski, a striker, died in the Warsaw Uprising," he notes.
As Poland brace to kick off Euro 2012 on home turf on Friday, there's an extra edge for Rylski, who remembers how playing football brought hope during the dark days of World War II.
The story of Rylski and hundreds like him who risked arrest or death at Nazi hands to play in secret leagues across the country is little known in Poland, let alone abroad.
"It was an escape from the harsh reality of daily life. It was a way to create an illusion of normality," the sprightly Rylski told AFP in a study full of trophies.
"It was also an act of protest against the German occupation. It was dangerous, but we felt satisfaction because it showed us that despite the terror, we were still here."
Polish football was shattered when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and carved up the country in 1939.
In German-occupied territory Jewish footballers were forced along with the rest of their community into ghettos, or perished in death camps set up by the Nazis.
Poles were faced a reign of terror aiming to reduce them to a slave population, with random executions and deportation to concentration camps.
The Nazis' grand strategy also included banning any form of organised activity by Poles, sport included.
In response, Poland developed a secret state with all the trappings of a fully-fledged government, including the Home Army, the largest resistance force in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Hand in hand with that came hidden schools or back-room theatres showing national staples -- and football.
"When confronted with a brutal occupation, people want to preserve something that was dear to them from before," Polish historian Jan Szudlinski told AFP.
"Sport is very important for society. By organising clandestine football, people were also sustaining Polish culture."
Rylski was born in December 1919.
As a 15-year-old in the southeastern town of Jaroslaw he joined Ognisko, a club in a local league.
"I caught the football bug. It's a virus you can never shake off," he said.
After the outbreak of the war, he got caught behind Red Army lines, but made his way to Warsaw at the end of the year.
There, he looked up a girlfriend.
"She told me she knew some lads who were into playing football," he said.
They turned out to be a group organised by word of mouth by former Poland striker Jozef Ciszewski, who died in 1987 aged 83.
"He wanted to give the games a formal character, and by the spring of 1940, the idea of a championship for occupied Warsaw was born," said Rylski.
On May 20, 1940, eight teams from different parts of Warsaw met on Mokotowskie Fields, a park south of the city centre.
"The conditions were pretty primitive. We used coats for goalposts," said Rylski, who alternated as a striker, midfielder or defender.
His side, Blysk, won that round-robin competition, which spawned a full-fledged Warsaw District Football Association whose teams also drew pre-war professionals.
"We'd play in different places around the city, to avoid the German security service catching on. We had huge personal satisfaction and a sense of freedom."
"But we also felt pressure, because you knew you could be arrested at any time."
Lookouts were posted to warn of the arrival of German patrols.
"We had to scatter if we saw armoured cars, and declare an abandoned match," he said.
In 1943, Blysk was wound up.
"Most of the players had been arrested, deported or killed," said Rylski, whose secret football career was combined with training to be a resistance lieutenant.
He joined a new-born club, Marymont, playing there until the Home Army's ill-fated 1944 Warsaw Uprising, during which the Nazis destroyed the city before retreating as the Soviets advanced.
Returning to the club to play from 1945 to 1948, he then moved into management.
He went on to become an official in the Polish Football Association, and was a member of the UEFA executive committee that launched the first European championship in 1960.