The bulk of the money to pay off the team’s debts was due a few days later, but it never arrived. At first, Ly told Wisla officials that his phone had been stolen, preventing him from sending the cash. Later, they were told that Ly had had a heart attack on his private jet as it flew to New York.

Ly was never heard from again. Despite repeated attempts by The Times to contact him by email and by phone, he did not respond. After initially hanging up the phone, Hartling emailed a one-line reply: “Ly is a criminal who will be pursued accordingly.”

Asked about Ly in a text message, Adam Pietrowski, the player agent who had brought Hartling to Wisla and was briefly club president, replied with an emoji: a sad face with a Pinocchio nose.

By then, Wisla Krakow had bigger problems than a missing investor. European soccer’s midseason transfer window would open Jan. 1, and with the club’s license to play suspended because of its grim financial state, and with its unpaid players likely to depart, Wisla had only a few weeks to stabilize its affairs.

Wislocki, who had successfully run the team’s youth academy, was appointed club president. Blaszczykowski, out of favor at his German club, Wolfsburg, suggested he would consider a return. In January, he and the two investors he had joined forces with delivered a vital infusion of cash to cover the team’s back wages. Still, he delayed his full commitment to play until the restoration of Wisla’s license was assured.

In the end, Wisla sold eight members of its squad in January, but the payment from Blaszczykowski, as well as the promise of playing alongside a player revered in Poland, stemmed the hemorrhaging of talent.

“Kuba gives us belief that we can make this club great again,” Wislocki said.

A Revival in the Cold

A few days after his first exhibition match, Blaszczykowski trotted onto the freezing field in Myslenice again as a large crowd sung his name. If anything, it was even colder. Again Wisla lost, again by 3-2, and again a crowd gathered by the entrance to the training ground in hopes of taking a photograph with Kuba.