Richard Orlowski

Richard Patrick Orlowski (born March 25, 1967) is a Polish-American soccer coach.^[2]

In his native Poland, Orlowski played as a forward^[3] for clubs such as Gofabet Gorzkowice, Piotrcovia Piotrków Trybunalski and Grunwald Poznań.^[4] Later, in 1984, he fled to Austria to escape from the political regression and the Soviet subjugation of his home country.^[3][4] He was then granted refugee status in New York, anglicized his name from Ryszard Orłowski to Richard, and settled in Pennsylvania.^[3][4] While living in the United States, he played for a succession of Polish-American teams and even had a stint in the Cayman Islands.^[4]

Orlowski was selected as Nepal national football team assistant coach along with Polish-American Jack Stefanowski- who was head coach.^[5][6] Their best result was a 2–1 victory over India in the 2013 SAFF Championship, before getting knocked out by Afghanistan en route to the final.^[4]

Orlowski was assigned the Anguilla head coach role in 2015,^[7] taking ownership of a team composed of construction workers, bankers, teachers, and boat builders.^[3] During his time there, he brought increased professionalism and tactical intuition to the country.^[3] Also, he recorded three friendly wins- two against the British Virgin Islands and one versus a non-FIFA nation, Saint Martin by galvanizing the players with the possibility of moving up the World Rankings into performing well.^[3] Those three triumphs were Anguilla's first wins in the space of fourteen years.^[3]

But when the FIFA World Rankings were updated, Anguilla had not received any points even though the British Virgin Islands were a FIFA nation. FIFA never rectified the error and, when Anguilla had to play Nicaragua for a 2018 World Cup qualifier, they lost twice on a combined score of 8–0;^[4] Orlowski resigned after eight months in charge.^[4]

Assigned Belize manager ahead of the 2017 Copa Centroamericana, he led the Jaguars to a 0–0 draw with Panama in their opening fixture.^[4][8] However, his team lost all their remaining group stage matches after that.^[4] His main ambition for the national team is to get youth involved in soccer at a much younger age and also wants more friendlies against better opposition as it would be beneficial to the teams chemistry and quality of play.^[4]

He is also involved with the youth sides of the Belize national team from the under-15 level.^[4] On account of this, he has drafted some younger players into the senior squad.^[4]

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