CSAPLÁR’S GLOSSARY: Heated lawns and lighting in the second league? Nonsense, nonsense non plus ultra!

“When I read the output from the recent LFA meeting, I had to look at the calendar to see if it was April 1st. Unfortunately, it was the end of June and I had to take a long breath. I consider the LFA’s statement that even second-division clubs must have heated turf and artificial lighting within five years to be crazy nonsense and nonsense.

Energy prices are soaring, Czech football is in the state it is in, and you at LFA come up with this?! We are not able to ensure the quality of the stadiums of the first league, we are not able to ensure the attendance or the attractiveness of the first league with this product. And now we think that there must be heated lawns and lighting in the second league so that twenty-two guys can run there once a fortnight and three hundred people watch them?

Yes, I wish it were so, that even the second division stadiums were equipped like those of the first league. But at the moment this is only at the end of the alphabet. Instead of being interested in how to increase the competitiveness of the overall product, we inform the second division clubs that they have to make ten million investments and that they should be helped by the cities.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the representatives of the cities came forward and said: get on our backs. It doesn’t matter to us if you are in the second league or in the ČFL. Show us in the first place that you are capable of helping yourself, that you are credible.

If I look at the LFA’s decision from a hundred angles, I find it deviant. For me, it is far more important to stop the decline of Czech football. One cannot fail to notice that clubs in the districts are disappearing. And that the tree called Czech football is losing its roots? Instead of investing in the roots, they invent, I’m not afraid to say the word debilitate, with heated lawns and lighting. Gentlemen, you could not have given a clearer proof that you are completely out of civil affairs.

In my glossaries, I have been providing a lot of arguments, facts, advice, and recommendations for a long time. I call a spade a spade in them. I must unfortunately state that I am unsuccessful in this. From the point of view that I couldn’t convince the people who pay for football, the club owners, the patrons, to really take football into their own hands. To really make a difference.

I often hear the opinion that those who hold high positions in football are satisfied with the current state of affairs. I’m not disputing that, I know very well that it suits them, otherwise they wouldn’t do these things. But I ask the patrons, the people who have power: do you care about this? If not, why don’t you start doing something about it, starting from the roots? Even at the cost of breaking your nose.

You know, I’m not surprised at the current state. But I still expected that at least some progress would occur. It didn’t happen. Football is either paid for by billionaires who have it as a toy and influence things around, or it is paid for by the taxpayer.

Yes, I fully agree with the opinion that Czech sport is financially undersized, that it needs much more support. But I see that support in kindergartens, at most in the first grade of primary schools. I do not mean in the form of the construction of new halls, artists, gyms, but primarily the support of movement. By investing in software – in trainers, coaches, teachers.

It always applies: love of movement comes first, love of sport comes second, love of a specific sport comes third. Then comes the finale, namely the love of competition. If we don’t do A or B, we can’t do C and D.

As if in an effort to improve and improve the cultural experience in the city, the town hall built a cultural house. A beautiful barrack for half a billion. But she would no longer be interested in its contents. Where will he get funds for books, for educational programs, for screening rooms, for competent employees. Czech football needs that content in the first place, to regain its soul. To grow new and new roots.

F-evolution tried, but only half-heartedly. With the tailgate open. We all know how that turned out. In short, instead of the clubs appointing competent people to the LFA and FAČR who want to play football, want to take responsibility for it, non plus ultra nonsense is invented.”