Argentina’s Paulo Dybala is the ‘missing piece’ in a Polish family divided by war
Sophia Aguilar
Published Apr 07, 2026
“It started with a letter that was addressed to my grandfather many, many, many years ago,” begins Angela Dybala.
“Literally just a scrap of paper. There was a picture in it, and it was Boleslaw with Paulo and one of his brothers as a baby. So that’s when I knew.”
Argentina vs Poland this evening will focus on one South American forward: Lionel Messi. The 35-year-old is embroiled in a battle to cement his legacy; Argentina, unfathomably, are at risk of a group stage exit.
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But until a penalty kick seven weeks ago, another forward might have been on the pitch with an even more interesting story to tell. Newly arrived in Rome, Paulo Dybala had scored eight goals in 13 games for Jose Mourinho’s Roma, putting an unhappy final season at Juventus behind him.
La Joya, ‘The Jewel’ as they call him, was gleaming once more.
Then, on October 9, it unravelled during a 3-1 win over Lecce. Awarded a 48th-minute spot-kick and presented with the chance to reassert the Roma lead, Dybala sent the keeper the wrong way and scored.
The injury was almost imperceptible; an awkward landing just before he struck the ball. Dybala hobbled to the sideline before his team-mates, unaware of the problem, mobbed him. Dybala knew straight away.
Having only played 22 minutes at the 2018 tournament, Qatar was everything. Currently 29 years old, another World Cup is not guaranteed. Injuring his hamstring put his dreams at risk.
Somehow, despite club and country expressing their doubts, he scraped his way into coach Lionel Scaloni’s Argentina squad as the 26th man. Still recovering and having played only 21 minutes since the injury, he has not featured yet at the tournament, even with games in the balance against Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
Now Argentina face Poland, a game for which there is added motivation. Think about the name. Dybala. It could pass as Argentine. It fits alongside the Acunas, the Correas, the Almadas.
But Dybala is not an Argentine name. His surname stems not from his hometown of Laguna Larga, on the road between the cities of Rosario and Cordoba. It is not Italian, where his mother Alicia’s family originate from Naples.
Instead, the name Dybala was bestowed by his paternal grandfather, a man named Boleslaw who was born in the village of Krasniow in southern Poland. Ahead of Argentina’s match against Poland, The Athletic resolved to tell the story of Dybala’s lost Polish heritage and complete a story 80 years in the making.
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It requires rewinding to a time before the big money move to Juventus, before the jewel was polished at Palermo and Instituto, back to a time when there was no Dybala in Argentina and when Europe was torn apart by war.
In 1939, immediately before the Second World War, Pjotr and Aniela Dybala had eight children, including two brothers named Boleslaw and Zygmunt.
Barely out of his teens, Boleslaw had been working for a priest. Krasniow was isolated and jobs were scarce. When Adolf Hitler’s armed forces invaded Poland on September 1 1939, the turmoil came.
Boleslaw, at the suggestion of the village leader, went to Germany, where he worked in a labour camp. His elder brother Zygmunt remained in Krasniow.
The Athletic tracked down Zygmunt’s granddaughter, Angela Dybala, now living in Smiths Falls, Ontario.
“I went backpacking in Poland, trying to discover where my family was from,” she says. “And I came across the surviving sisters — Henryka and Janina. I had just come back from visiting Auschwitz, which was less than 10 miles from the house.
“Then they said to me, ‘Did you know your grandfather worked there?’. And I was flooded with emotion. They claimed he was forced to work at the camp. He used to drive the wagons between the gas chamber and the crematorium. That was his job.
“He never spoke of it, ever. Even my father trying to tell me about it — it just was not something they spoke about. My grandmother, Cecilia, who was still alive when I was born — she came from a German camp as well. So it was impossible to get information out of them.”
During the war, the Dybala family became separated. Boleslaw, unable to find work on his return from Germany, decided he would emigrate to Argentina. Shorn of money and starving, he slept in cornfields until he found a ship to take him to South America.
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Zygmunt, according to Angela, just wanted to flee as far away from Poland as possible. He also ended up in the Americas — but in Canada, over 5,300 miles north of his younger brother. He found employment as a railroad driver, in a small town not dissimilar from Krasniow.
“Both small and quaint, surrounded by farmland,” Angela describes.
But Boleslaw and Zygmunt never met in person again. All that connected them were yearly letters, sent between Laguna Larga and Smiths Falls, containing money if one brother was struggling, or a communion wafer.
“Zygmunt’s language was mainly English here,” explains Angela. “So he wouldn’t have spoken much Polish apart from this at all. There was just one other Polish man, who my grandfather was friends with.”
Angela’s father wanted to track down his uncle, Boleslaw, who they knew had been in Argentina, but they knew no address or even if he was still there. “So I said to my father, Zygmunt’s son, ‘Don’t worry about it — I’ll find him’.”
She had a photo, received from Argentina, which featured Boleslaw with a baby Paulo, though there was no return address.
However, she did find an address in Poland from one of her grandfather’s letters. So she set out for Poland, hoping to meet his surviving sisters.
“When I arrived in Poland I met Henryka. She told me that nobody had experienced any contact from this missing brother, but Paulo was a soccer star in Argentina. We were just sitting having dinner and I was like, ‘There’s no way’.”
Half a world away, Dybala had similar questions. His father Adolfo, who drove the young Dybala 70 miles to training every day, died when Paulo was 14. Boleslaw passed away in 1997, when Paulo was only three. The Polish connection appeared ruptured.
“Some Polish journalists put me in touch with my grandfather’s daughter but she passed away,” he told The Guardian in January 2020. “There are cousins in Canada but we’ve not met. I want to.”
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“He’s the last piece of history in our family that we have no connection with, the missing piece,” says Angela. “My dad is getting old and I’d like to make the last links with his family before he’s not able to travel. That’s why I thought I’d give it a shot.”
The Athletic attempted to put Angela and Paulo in contact, but the striker’s injury came at a bad time for him to get to the World Cup and for meeting his long-lost family.
On Wednesday, against the odds, he will be in the Argentina squad, readying himself for the possibility of partnering Lionel Messi.
In another world, he could be partnering another modern great, Barcelona and Poland striker Robert Lewandowski. Dybala previously attempted to get a Polish passport but his grandfather’s papers, perhaps understandably in the tumult and terror of war, had been lost.
Back in Smiths Falls, a branch of his family will be torn between Argentina and Poland. Angela’s son, Jackson, is obsessed with Dybala and attends soccer training in Juventus and Roma jerseys with ‘Dybala 21’ stitched on the back.
“He’s his idol now,” smiles Angela. “He just thinks it’s the greatest thing ever. His room was all Juventus, then, when he left, I had to buy a Roma bedspread. Because I got married, Jackson’s surname is Benoit. But I call him Dybala out on the pitch.”
The chances of the other Dybala featuring on the pitch on Wednesday evening are slim. Lautaro Martinez has been Messi’s favoured strike partner, with Scaloni calling it “a technical decision” on Tuesday.
But if Dybala does play against his grandfather’s homeland, the match will become significant for more than Messi’s last ride; a family scattered around the world by ships; a footballer in a stadium built from shipping containers.
“My boss will let me watch it at work,” says Angela. She’s hoping to see Paulo walk on, a missing link restored.
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Read more: Argentina eliminated the Netherlands on penalties to advance to the semi-finals
(Top photo: Juan Manuel Serrano Arce via Getty Images)
