COMMENT: When the rust of the Olomouc sheet metal works even in the local offices

It’s strange with Olomouc. Last season, she roped in David Krejčí, this season she is playing purposeful hockey even without him, and even if things are grinding in recent weeks, she will at least secure a solid position for the preliminary round. Nevertheless, it has had the label of a provincial club for years, symbolizing the “rooster’s tin house”, for many the worst extra-league stadium and a frequent target of ridicule.

It is actually unfair, because the shabby winter is not the fault of the club as a mere tenant. However, it is very sad when the rust of the outer scenes is also reflected in the offices and one of the heads of the organization with a budget of tens of millions loses its luster and behaves like a local IV. price.

A sports journalist from MF DNES has been banned from matches for a couple of years now, because he displeased him because of a certain critical article. On the club’s website a few weeks ago, he described the journalist from hokey.cz as “an illiterate and a fool”. long shot,” he said, among other things, because his result predictions at that time did not correspond so well with the real ones.

Now, after Sunday’s match with Plzeň, he unleashed invectives against the referee Mrkvo, whom he first insulted after the match, only to tell the newspaper Sport a day later – perhaps with a cooler head – that the guests, the home team and the spectators were pissed off on Sunday. And Mr. Mrkva leaves with a greasy mouth from a sausage or something completely satisfied, because he is taking home a paycheck. He’s thicker than me – and that’s saying something, so he lacks the movement he should have on the ice.”

Fürst is not the first – and certainly not the last – hockey manager who felt wronged by the referees and so angrily complained to the media. Karlovy Vary’s Miroslav Vaněk was paid 50,000 for this almost 20 years ago, when he claimed that “referees influence the extra league and support rich clubs”, which, considering inflation, is probably a higher patch than his colleague from Olomouc received now. Vítkovicky’s Aleš Pavlík four years ago for the accusation that the referee Jan Hribik is corrupt, he bet 80 thousand…

They apologized. But it’s a sport, in which, especially immediately after the match, emotions bubble up and many times even the true conviction that simply erring referees were the weakest link on the ice. And let’s face it, the quality of the referees is indeed fluctuating in the domestic leagues and groves, which is also indicated by the recent loud complaint of the leaders of Pardubice.

However, after many years, the clubs also approved their autonomy, the league is managed and sold by their association, i.e. there are no “unsophisticated buffoons” from the union. And so the department officials simply have to understand that with similar statements they are primarily devaluing their own product, which is often the same ones officials convinced that it is beaten on marketing and television rights, i.e. that it is not adequately sold.

When the officials know very well that without representative successes and, on the contrary, with a number of union scams from recent years, it will be difficult for greedy children to flock to hockey recruitment, they should also understand that with similar vulgar outpourings, it will be difficult for new referees to apply . And that they find themselves in a vicious circle.

That is why Loukota received a strong punishment. And perhaps also a warning that frustration, harsh words and a sense of doom belong to sport, but there are some boundaries of decency that are not crossed in decent society. And that even a hockey note can travel the diplomatic route.