— 24/07/1932 —

The club, which has several likeable players in its midst, has won over the audience and often the judge as well. After all, even the most objective judge very often falls under the charm of the player's sympathy and judges his mistakes differently than the fault of the player, who is notoriously known that the rules of fair play are just a piece of paper for him. A man with a bad reputation in football is not only a drain on the good reputation of the club, but very often pays for his typical unfair style by being expelled from the game, distance, and possibly even corporal punishment when leaving the field.

Of course, not only unfair play, but also shouting at the referee, mocking teammates or the referee, constant protesting, arrogant gestures and smiles can degrade the player to an unsympathetic prima donna, whose failure is accepted by the audience with laughter, whistles or humiliating shouts.

"Everyone is the architect of their own luck", this true saying has proven itself perfectly in football as well.

Let's look around the past or the most recent history of our football and we will see a series of faded stars who shone prematurely only because they disgusted club officials and fans, journalists and the entire sports public with their game and impossible behavior. The antipathy of the barriers arises suddenly, like a small mountain spring, but over time it grows into a torrent of resistance, against which repentance and the desire for rehabilitation are a very small dam.

I especially warn our young players not to play with the displeasure of the spectators and not to underestimate the initial manifestations of resentment against their person. A player who fails to notice the danger in time will be lost and discarded the first time a new, more sympathetic reinforcement appears.

Of course, the club also suffers from the player's unpopularity with the audience, and we then witness that the team, due to one or several unsympathetic prima donnas, is booed as soon as they arrive on the pitch. And this is the first overwhelming fact for the club, as for the director of the theater, whose members are greeted with expressions of displeasure from the outraged audience when they enter the stage instead of applause.

There is no need to mention the fact that it is difficult to find dates for such a team and the club's coffers suffer as a result. It is a self-evident consequence!

Understandably, I cannot give examples of typically unsympathetic clubs or prima donnas within this chapter, nor can I name the most likable players in Czechoslovakia. To me, every player was likable, who was polite to his own friends in the club and to the opponent, even in the fiercest heat of the fight, he always knew how to maintain a level of acceptable sharpness. I will talk about friends and camaraderie in the club in another chapter. In conclusion, I want to name the international trio of the nicest players I have met in my entire career. It's the Spaniard Zamora, Austrian Gschweidl and Hungarian Kalmár.

THE MOST POPULAR STARS OF FOOTBALL HEAVEN.

During a long period of active football activity, I had the opportunity to assess from practice an entire army of international players of all nations. If I choose the best, then I have to admit that it is not my fault, but the downward development of continental football, if I mainly record the players of the older football generation who are the best goalkeepers of continental Europe. I will name eleven of them (many of them you know, if not from the fields of Letná, then at least from the columns of international football): the Spaniard Zamora, the Italian Combi, the Belgian De Bie, the German Stuhlfauth, the Austrians Franzl and Hiden, the French Chayriguès, the Yugoslav Syflis, the Hungarians Amsel and Plattkó (Plattkó also caught once in Spartan shirt in the match Sparta—Hakoah 3:2 in Vienna) and Czechoslovak Plánička! The English, as far as I have seen them play on the continent, have never had a goalkeeper of exceptional class. I think they are fully aware of this in the homeland of football, which is evidenced by the attempt to acquire some of the outstanding goalkeepers of the European continent, and recently the almost already successful "pulling" of the popular Austrian international Hiden. Sparta also did not have much luck with goalkeepers. The best After all, Franta Peyr was a long shot of them all.

If I had my best will, I could include only one Czechoslovak, Plánička, in the eleven best goalkeepers in Europe. With the full-backs, things will look much better for our football. Before the named defenders, the most famous forwards of their time had respect, and our readers will surely have it too, if we say in advance that the Son of God is also in their parade! We will start this time with the Czechs: Ant. Hojer, Mira Pospíšil, Ríša Veselý, Füring, Ráca, Fráňa Steiner and Kuchynka. Austrians: Blum, Rainer and Schramseis. Hungarians: Fogl brothers and Kertész. Italians: Caligaris and De Vecchi (Son of God). Swede Alfredson. Dane: Tarp. Belgian: Dr. Swartenbroeks, Holland: Denis. Swiss: Ramseis. The phenomenal Uruguayan full-back Nasazzi must also be added to this number. After the last Slavia-Sparta match played on May 1st at Letná and also after the Zurich debacle, we can also talk about a crisis in the formerly so famous defense lines of Czechoslovakia. Let's be fair: Burgr, Čtyroký, Ženíšek, Fiala, all limped along behind their excellent predecessors. However, the most significant decline in the class of the entire continental football can be seen in the reserve ranks. That is why the main causes of the decline of today's football era are unanimously attributed by experts to the aging or the dying out of the old famous reserve guard. Years ago, every nation had some shining star in the reserve line.

But today? We just have to live by the memories! Perhaps only Austria is lucky to have its own Hofmann and Smistik, but neither are they, judging by their recent performance, in splendid form. Also, the fame of the Hungarian half-backs Kalmár, Borsányi and Lázár has faded considerably recently. Even the famous pride of German football, the popular international German colossus Kalb and the Spanish Sancho belong to history. Of our excellent half-backs, I would name especially Perner, Kolenatý, Seifert, Pleticha, and from the oldest guards: Huska, Fivébr and Kotouc.

On this occasion, it is also necessary to mention the famous black half-back Andrade from Nacional Montevideo. Andrade played for the injured Petrone in the Prague match against Sparta as the leader of the attack, but his biggest laurels were harvested in the half-back line. And especially at the Olympic Games in Paris. The Argentinian Evaristo was also a phenomenal half-back!

Towards the end of this chapter I have saved a review of the most famous forwards in Europe. While many of the names of the above mentioned have been preserved in the archives of the sports museums, some of them still shine in the sky of football stars. Among the latter, that is to say, the more fortunate ones, are: our Belgian Braine, the Austrians Sindelar, Gschweidl and Schall, the Italians Meazza and Orsi, the Hungarians Turay, Kalmár, Kohut and Auer, the Czechoslovaks Silný, Svoboda, Bejbl, Puč, Kannhäuser, Bulla. From the old guard, it is mainly the late best Czech football phenomenon Košek and then the unforgettable quintet of the sunny Spartan machine: Sedláček, Šroubek, Pilát, Janda and Mazal. Of the other historical phenomena of the Czech attackers, I must name in particular: Baumruk, Vaňek, Dvořáček, Karlík, Bohat, Bělka, Ruth and Špindler.

Among the foreigners, the greatest merits as forwards were earned by: Alcantara, Piera, Harder, Wieser, Braun, Szabó, Opata (he also played in Nuremberg for Sparta) and Schaffer, Schlosser, Rydell, Hitrec, Nicholas. I would like to point out that in the series of named players there are only those that I knew very well, because I fought with them many times on the green lawn.

EUROPE'S MILLIONAIRE TEAM!

Various combinations of the best assembled continental squad occasionally emerge in the reports. I would not dare to put together a suitable representative European team from today's situation, but for your interest I will put together an international eleven, which in its time would have been a completely equal opponent to the carefully nominated national team of England or Scotland. Of course, not today, but let's say five years ago, when most of the appointed were in the best condition. So:

R. Orsi                        Orth                        Braun 
Meazza            Schaffer

A. Perner         Káďa         Kolenatý

Blum         Hojer

Zamora

With the current meaningless gaps for average class players, many readers will surely think of the question, how many hundreds of thousands would a committee that wanted the entire named eleven for their club have to pay these days? That wouldn't be just a hundred-thousand-dollar forward, that would certainly be Europe's million-dollar team.

I think it would pay off more and earn more money than today's hundred thousand attractions.

CZECHOSLOVAKS GO ABROAD FOR THE FIRST TIME.

In 1908, the last international match between England and Czechoslovakia was played in Prague at the Slavia pitch, then the natural consequences of the international federation's boycott of the same year in Vienna against the Czechoslovakia were already manifested.

What a turnaround eleven years (1919) later — the coup suddenly broke all the edges of the international anti-Czech boycott.

Czech sports became free with the restoration of our state independence, our national associations could treat everyone as an equal from that day on. It was a wonderful relief from the tension of the previous decades, when one union after another, depending on how it felt the need for international relations, went through constant struggles for the recognition of its independence, struggles that exhausted the energy of the leaders of our sport and which were accompanied by mixed results.

*   *   *

Isaque Argolo: Directly from the document, the name of the left inside forward of the XI was "Roseta", strangely. I considered the name of Rossetti, Torino's prolific goal-scorer, as the option, since he reached a high level "five years earlier" — as mentioned by Káďa in the text above, even though Káďa did not mention the name of the Italian player — the same happened with Orth, who was not mentioned, but was selectioned in the XI. However, in Káďa's book, published in 1947, this name was changed to "Meazza". There is a possibility that already in 1932 Káďa considered Meazza as his main option as an inside forward.

Strangely, Káďa switched Šroubek with Janda in the inside forward positions, when he mentioned the A.C. Sparta quintet. It is quite possible that he did this in his own European team, as Schaffer was much better known as a left inside forward than right inside forward and, consequently, it would be another argument for this "Roseta" to have been, in fact, Meazza, since he was also well known as a right-insider.