Football Coach’s Fall: Dukla to Brazil & Alcohol’s Grip

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Josef Přáda pours himself a freshly bubbled mineral water and from the seventh floor of the block of flats at the end of the street looks around at the Prosek housing estate in Prague below him. “It’s a shame that Ládík was such an idiot. He wasted the football talent he got from God. He gave it away. And when he was at the bottom, he couldn’t tell. He drank, drank until he was drunk,” he says with regret.

On the couch in the study is a gilded snuffbox that Ladislav Přáda, a former star of European football, received from an opponent from Belgrade for two beautiful goals he scored. As a thank you for an extraordinary football experience. If he hadn’t drowned in alcohol, there could have been a hundred times more of those experiences: “You know, Ládík had no role model to look up to. If he had, maybe he would have been able to stop.”

Dad, a postman at the Pilsen-Božkov post office, was a drunkard. Despot. “We defended my mother when he fought with her for the last twenty kroner, which he decided to spend in the street. Ever since I was a child, I was sure that I did not want and would not be like our father. He was a shining example of how to behave,” recounts Přád’s last surviving sibling.

The poor Přádovics had seven children. The eldest Jaroslav, a soldier by profession, was a great athlete who competed with Emil Zátopek on endurance tracks. Then Karel was born, who despised communists, hated uniforms, and his dad threw him out of the house because of it. Old Mr. Práda, the despot, was a sworn communist, one of the founding members of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic with ID number 13.

Ladislav, a future football celebrity, was born in April 1932 as the third child. Václav followed in quick succession. The little girls Boženka and Růženka were already late, as was our narrator Josef, who is slowly approaching eighty. He was the only one left to take care of the family’s legacy. He helped write the book An unfortunate football legendwhich discusses Přád, and he himself creates his brother’s film medallion.

“I will never forget the terror my father caused us. We all had to jump when he whistled. As a child I wanted revenge on him. When he taught me lessons as a tiny child, I was punished by such blows that I bled. Could he have been Lad’s role model?”

When the war started, the Přáds moved to Prague. They got a tiny municipal apartment in Vysočany and dad, who was able to smoke 80 partisan girls a day, worked as a janitor in Prosek.

At sixteen (“I was just born,” Josef points out), the football talent slammed the door after one of the many arguments and moved to Trnova in the former Sudetenland to live with his grandmother. It was there that his rapid end apparently began. Even as a teenager, he excelled on the field. He handled the defender like a pimp, the ball stuck to his leg, feet, cribs, jams. Anyone who saw him live had to admit that he has no competition in terms of technical performance.

Fans overtook him, ordering rounds, and the young shooter didn’t say no. He was a showman and a brat all in one. And a weakling too. “He wouldn’t have hurt anyone. We Přáds didn’t know how to make a subterfuge,” Brother Josef emphasizes several times.

Via Liberec, the center forward joined Prague’s Dukla, then ATK (Army Sports Club) as a soldier. He was even better, more expressive, more fun. With quick loop, change of direction and precise ending. At the same time, he was able to shoot such a pumice stone from the volley that he calmly took the goalkeepers’ breath away when he hit them in the chest: “Ládík played football for fun. Not like today, when football players are robots.”

He was invited to the national team for the first time in his 53rd year, less than three years later he won the title with Dukla. In the meantime, he was able to train soccer wizards from Brazil at Strahov. The crowded stadium, where over 40 thousand people came, applauded his finesse and the 0:0 draw.

On a tour of South America, they offered him a million pesos, and newspapers published articles about the white Pelé. Famous opponents wondered why he had not kicked for Real Madrid for a long time with such skill.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t even think about playing anywhere other than at home: “My brother was a great patriot.”

He gave away all the valuables and trinkets he received on his travels. Watches, statuettes, medals, trinkets. It was enough for him to have a good time on the field and drink after the match. Beer and shots were brought to his table for free, he took a guitar or a heligonka and sang cajdákas around the pubs. In Srdíček, across from Masaryk station, there used to be an obden. Brother Josef turns from the computer where he has all his memories, looks at the guitar hanging on the wall and hums a song he remembers: “Our Karel has a girlfriend, she doesn’t want to eat him. She would probably like to get married soon.”

One of the memorable matches was played by Ladislav Práda in Leningrad. In the archives, it is most often mentioned that the duel took place in Moscow against the Soviet Union and the legendary Lev Yashin stood in goal. However, brother Josef discovered an eyewitness, a certain engineer from Energoprojekt, who was actually at the match and told the story of how the Czech bohemian went around two defenders in the middle of the field, avoided the goalkeeper, ran with the ball to the goal line, leaned his right hand on the post and…

“It is said that he tapped the crossbar and asked the Russians if he could go on, but I didn’t hear that from afar. Maybe Práda did it, maybe not. But like today, I remember how the goalkeeper got up and wanted to jump for the ball, after which Práda pushed it into the net with his left hand.”

According to his testimony, Dukla played against the Wings of the Soviets and won 5:2.

Bizarre stories are scattered by the younger brother by the handful.

When Ladislav got ten crowns from his dad for the train to catch the match, he still waved at him with a smile, then disappeared through the back door straight into the pub as the carriages started.

In Argentina, while playing the guitar until the morning, he smashed the toilet window because he wanted to go to sleep, but the excited guests did not want to let him out of the bar.

As if the boy was sleeping with his older brother Karl in bed and in his dreams he was kicking him in the shins and shouting goal.

How tired after the binge he curled up under the table and laid down there like a beaten dog.

How he ordered a stork with poppy seeds to go with his beer and the waiters stared at him, wondering what he really wanted from them. You were just fooling around.

How, in his army uniform, he used a tape measure to measure the skates of those who were waiting for Štvanice in the queue at the winter stadium.

How he casually pulled down his shorts in front of the stands with the fans when they criticized him for his poor performance. Yes, sometimes he really didn’t want to.

How he lied to defenders by talking crap with them during games. Once he talked about a sick grandmother, another time about a cat that wouldn’t eat him. As soon as the opponents let up, he had an advantage.

How his teammates ordered him not to get drunk at least before kick-off. And when he still evaporated, coach Kolský let him look for the nearest businesses. As soon as they found him drinking beer, they grabbed him by the flag and brought him to the stadium to play at least the last part of the game as punishment.

How could he have been vice-champion of the 1962 world in Chile, if he had just let himself be told.

How he never reconciled with his dad and died before both parents.

How he was sent to prison for being a parasite and not paying alimony for his son (God knows if and where he possibly lives).

How in Liberec, when he was under steam again, he tore up a woman’s ID card and insulted the summoned Public Security patrol.

He was able to cut him out of a lot of drunken slurs, General Alexej Čepička, almost the highest scumbag in the republic, to whom Přáda reported with a boastful statement: “The Czechoslovak army has only two decent soldiers. General Čepička and Lieutenant Přáda.”

But after the escape from Liberec, Čepička stopped protecting him. That was too much for him. As a result, Přáda ended up in big football and only went to play where they gave him a drink. Příbram, Kutná Hora, Velký Borek, Podřipan Rovné.

He made a living as best he could. He was wasting away. For a few years, he slept in a parked carriage at the Žižkov railway station.

Screenwriter Ladislav Pecháček and director Dušan Klein apparently used Přád’s alcoholic fate in the film The good pigeons are coming back (1988). During the scene when Miloš Lexa (played by Milan Kňažek) checks into an alcohol treatment facility, soccer player Láďa Muclinger (Pavel Zedníček), who was supposed to arrive as well, is missing. In the end, “that famous prankster with a cannon shot and a millimeter pass” was brought in completely at night.

“Yes, it was our Ládík,” brother Josef nods.

In the end, Přád was saved from the most tragic fate by a certain Zdeňka Podlešáková, who took him home, to a damp ground-floor apartment in Prague’s Nuslí, and took care of him. As written in the book about Přád: “She met him at the Na Pleši sanatorium near Mníšek pod Brdy, when she began a nine-month treatment there in January 1977. It is said that he was found spewing blood in a park near the Main Railway Station. He was only forty-five at the time, and yet a beggar without an identity. Somewhere he had stolen or drunk all his documents. Although there was no one, after a lung operation they awarded at least permanent disability.’

He died 30 years ago almost in oblivion. As an alcoholic who could play football like no one else. He was sixty-three.

“Even though he was raised on the streets, he was an incredibly empathetic person, kind-hearted and trusting. He just wasn’t allowed to drink.”

Přád’s ashes were scattered on the scattering meadow at the Olšan Cemetery. Only the last living sibling had a marble tombstone made for him years later.

You can find it on Prosek. A short distance from the view that Josef Přáda has from his apartment on the seventh floor.