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Under the title Drawer from 2023, a language and cultural patrol, which he is preparing at Seznam Zprávách, will be published Jan Lipold. Because words are just raindrops.
The new Minister of Foreign Affairs Petr Macinka (AUTO) is learning fast. This was revealed by his fiery declaration before New Year’s Eve: “Ukraine has retreated significantly in recent days, now the ball is in Russia’s court.”
The editors of Šuplík are not talking about geopolitical analysis this time either. Our radar is on the cliché “the ball is in someone’s court”. It is so popular that we cannot explain it other than that a proper diplomatic academy today must also have a department of physical education. And this is strictly taught there.
Using the “ball” at least once a month is a prerequisite for a VIP ticket to the international scene. If we understand it correctly.
Until recently, it was thought and said that high politics was something like chess. And that it depends on who can think more moves ahead. That is already an outdated idea. The initiative was taken over by more attractive ball sports. They are clearer, they give politics the impression of clarity, unequivocalness, a direct path to the result.
But with them, you really have to play with the balloon, hit it, bounce it. Otherwise, no one will score a game, a set or a match. The audience boos.
Therefore, and this is a significant difference from sports, the ball is never “on our side” in a political tussle. We would blame ourselves for the delay. The ball always lies elsewhere, usually on the opponent’s side. So in the invasion of sovereign Ukraine on the side of the indicted war criminal Putin, it has been rolling there for the fourth year. Absolutely no matter who is verbally kicking him. To the ball.
“The ball is clearly in Russia’s court,” NATO Secretary General Rutte said in May when asked by reporters what Putin’s absence from the Istanbul talks meant. At the time, Putin, on the other hand, claimed that the ball was “in the court of the Ukrainian government and its curators.” And some analysts even thought the ball was (then was) in Trump’s court.
Volleyball over three or more different nets? And how many balls are played with? Does anyone whistle at all?
We have heard hundreds of times that the ball is in the court of Putin or Moscow in the war against Ukraine. It is a bare statement of reality, which over time began to sound more and more like a shrug of the shoulders. As if (just like in sports) movement without the ball doesn’t matter, and the one who doesn’t have the ball has no choice but to stand like a hard Y and call out to the opposite side: Come on, play, play already!
“The ball is in someone’s court” is a statement flavored with an alibi in the case of the Democrats, a lie in the case of the Kremlin. (“The ball is totally and completely in the court of our Western opponents, primarily the leaders of the Kyiv regime and also their, in this case primarily European, sponsors.” Putin said at the pre-Christmas press conference 2025.)
In any case, those in question indicate that they won’t do much with all this, being without the ball. You have to do that from the opposite side of the field. They!
The rhetoric of empty platitudes flourished. What will people buy for them somewhere in a bombed-out housing estate behind the front line? Not even a bit of heat.
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The palette of localities where the imaginary – but this adjective is not even used anymore – ball is of course more varied. The ball, we learned from the news, was also on the Slovak side of the field, on the Israeli side or on the Indian side. “The ball is now in America’s court.” (A European diplomat during tariff negotiations.) “The ball is in China’s court. China has to make a deal with us.” (A White House spokesman in a similar situation.)
The Czech ball was recently found on the side of the Motorists, where Karel Havlíček placed it during coalition negotiations. In the eternal dispute about who is to blame for expensive food, according to the representative of farmers, Martin Pýcha, “the ball is on the side of the traders”, which supports the hypothesis that it is not actually a ball, but a hot potato. That’s a cliché of a different type than round nonsense. Mostly it is.
The rules of polit-ball, or as this language sport is called, were perhaps best understood by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, according to whom Europe and Germany are not “the playing ball of the world powers”. “Europe is not a playing ball, Europe is a sovereign player.”
The right tactic. You have to like that kind of offensive football. That is, it would still be missing, becoming a ball that is on someone’s side every moment!
