PRAGUE
History
There is a good chance that this year, for the first time in four seasons, the two great rivals of Czech football will face each other in spring neck-and-neck for the championship. They were just two points apart at the winter break, and when record title-winners Sparta and long-time underdogs Slavia clash at Sparta’s Toyota Arena on April 21, each will surely still have a chance of wresting the title from the holders, provincial club Slovan Liberec.
As always, Sparta are favourites to win at the Letna, the traditional name for their home ground, which is also the national stadium, but their rivals are certainly due a victory.
Slavia have not won the title since 1996, the memorable triumph coming a century after their rivalry with Sparta had begun. The clubs met for the first time on March 29, 1896, in a 0-0 draw at the Emperor’s Meadow in front of 121 paying spectators.
Four days earlier, Slavia had first worn their red-and-white halved shirts, with the red five-pointed star badge, a symbol of Czech nationalism. Prague was part of the Habsburg empire at the time, ruled from Vienna; Slavia was the name of a Czech-language society of literature, sport and debate.
Sparta enjoyed a large working-class support. The team were renowned for fighting until the final minute, earning themselves the nickname zelezna – Iron Sparta.
So the games between these two clubs, the Derby ‘S’, started to take on extra significance. Slavia dominated the early exchanges and thrashed their rivals 9-1 in 1907 and 9-2 four years later. But Sparta fought back, recording gritty wins in 1913 and 1914.
Until the Second World War, the clubs monopolised the championship. They also both won the Mitropa Cup, a forerunner of the European Cup, and provided the bulk of the Czechoslovak team that nearly won the 1934 World Cup.
The Prague football scene was entertaining and colourful. The football fraternity discussed the game in the cigarette smoke of the Cafe Slavia, and on the pitch, players were not afraid to try unusual moves, using tricks learned in street football.
But for Slavia the good times came to an end in 1947 when they won their 13th title, with legendary Pepi Bican leading the line. The following year came the Communist takeover, when sport was another area of Czech life to be restructured. Sparta’s support earned them the favour of the authorities, but the leadership viewed the troublesome university-educated intellectuals of Slavia with suspicion. The club were stripped of their name, their star players and the 1948 autumn title, something still disputed to this day.
New force
Slavia, rebranded Sokol Praha 7 then Dynamo, suffered the ignominy of second division football after half the squad went to newly-formed army side, ATK, later renamed Dukla, the new force in the Czech game.
Dukla carried the flag for football-proud Prague into the televised era of European competition. Sparta changed acronyms – TJ CKD, AC – but always remained Sparta, and picked up the odd title.
Slavia later got back their name and top-flight status, even getting the better of the Derby ‘S’ in the 1970s. Slavia players honoured the 1989 student demonstrations against the Communist regime with a pre-match show of support.
The changes to a free-market economy after the Communist collapse led the army to withdraw their support from Dukla in 1994. The club, for ever linked to the hated former regime, were hurtling towards bankruptcy and playing in front of three-figure crowds. Then, in 1996, they were merged with second division FC Pribram by entrepreneur Bohumir Duricko. The new entity, Marila Pribram, based 60km south-west of Prague, are currently fighting a relegation battle in the top flight.
Bohemians, another Prague club, have had a similarly turbulent existence since the war. Despite their proletarian roots, they were not favoured by the Communist authorities and, like Slavia, were forced to change their name, first to Zeleznicar then Spartak Stalingrad. They
became Bohemians again in the 1970s and enjoyed their best period in the Eighties. The club were then relegated and nearly went out of business in 2005, only to be saved by fans’ donations. Club president is Antonin Panenka, hero of Czechoslovakia’s penalty shoot-out win in the Euro 76 Final.
Entrepreneurs dominated the Czech game in the 1990s. Millionaire Vratislav Cekan spent a fortune rescuing Viktoria Zizkov, the club of the working-class Prague 3 district who are currently in the second division. The Rezes family, owners of the Kosice steelworks in Slovakia, threw enough money at debt-ridden Sparta to keep them atop the League and competing in the Champions League. Czech-American Boris Korbel took over Slavia but had left by the time Karel Poborsky, Radek Bejbl and Vladimir Smicer led the club to the 1996 title, their first for 50 years.
As Slavia’s pre-war goalkeeping hero Frantisek Planicka lay dying in bed, the club triumphed on an emotional May afternoon. A month later, the same three players helped take the national team to the Euro 96 Final, marking a real revival in the country’s football.
After that, Slavia sold their stars and have failed to match Sparta since – but the derby always holds its magic and the rivalry is as historic as any in the European game. In October, there were six yellow cards and one red in a feisty 0-0 draw at Slavia’s temporary home, the Evzen Rosicky stadium. Next year will see the first derby at Slavia’s revamped Eden stadium. Last season’s meeting at the Letna attracted a crowd of 20,300, the highest since 1993. The game at Sparta in April will be the 265th derby in all.
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