What they saw in no way resembled the horror story portrayed last month in the sensationalist BBC Panorama documentary entitled “Stadiums of Hate.” Visiting fans were presented with a young, dynamic and tolerant Poland: The entire Warsaw Central Station has been mummified by a massive banner reading “Feel Like at Home.” Despite the clumsy grammar, the message is clear: The Poland of today is open to Europe and eager to please.

More importantly though, Euro 2012 has changed how Poles see each other — and themselves.

Polish history has given Poles plenty of practice in losing. Reacting to Poland’s defeat against the Czech Republic, the spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry argued that “supporting Poland is closer to reality than supporting Germany or Barcelona — it puts you in good stead to weather life blows.” This sentiment runs deep within Polish society. Listen to the commentary of Poland’s three tournament games and you hear an emotional monologue punctuated by the words “fate,” “faith,” “fortune” — peppered with the occasional name of a footballer.

In Poland, soccer and national identity have always been tightly stitched together. As a soccer-obsessed child in the early 1990s, I was subjected to emotional blackmail each time the Polish team played. My grandfather Zygmunt, a hard-boiled communist, supported Poland no matter what. Unless Poland was playing Russia. I was ordered to do the same. In reality, Zygmunt paid little attention to the game and usually spent the 90 minutes lecturing my father, an Englishman, on why Western soccer had no soul and was doomed to fail.

My main football companion was my great-uncle, Dudek, a Holocaust survivor. If the Polish team was playing we would tune in and cheer them on. Unless Poland was playing Israel. During these games I was urged to support Israel, my decision helped along by a bribe of Dudek’s oversweet vanilla halva. As a child with a sweet tooth and flexible morals, I always agreed.

My mother’s mantra was that Polish team performed so poorly that it simply didn’t deserve to win. She believed the best Poland could hope for was to cling to the successes of yesteryear. She would talk dreamily of the golden generation of Polish football, of heroes such as Deyna, Boniek, Lato and Lubanski who managed to claw third place at the 1974 and 1982 World Cup.