MY LIFE, PART 48: Don’t tell anybody!

My mom and dad weren’t exactly ecstatic when I told him that I, a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, would be commuting every day to Blšany. “Where even is that? Near Louny? And you say it only has a thousand inhabitants? But it’s sixty-five kilometres! How are you going to get there?”

But I wanted to do it. I wanted it very much!

It was clear to me that Aleš Chvalovský, the son of the club’s owner and goalkeeper for the Under-21 national team, would still be the first-choice goalkeeper, but this was a chance that might not come again.

I didn’t have a contract and as a free agent I could sign with anyone for the fixed rate of 350,000 Czech crowns.

And Plzeň hesitated.

I guess it was meant to be, it was fate. But František Plass, who worked as a scout for Blšany, still insisted: “Please, don’t tell anybody.”

I didn’t want to mess this up. I wanted to train with the senior squad of a top-flight club, and I could also play for their junior team in the Czech youth league. I knew it would help me move forward. How much? I wasn’t thinking of that.

If I may, I would now like to give the floor to a man who has since sadly passed away. His name was Zdeněk Kovář, he was the sporting director in Blšany for many years. He was great fun, selfless and big-hearted, with a prominent black moustache. It was under his leadership that a provincial club managed to get from the seventh division into the first league. And he was the man who offered me my first professional contract.