MY LIFE, PART 17: Petr, left wing!

Up until I was twelve, the most important thing for me was the concrete playground behind our house. When I finished football practice, I ran home, threw my bag into the hall and I was out of the door once again, heading to our spot.

I used to stay there till nightfall, and when it got dark I would start checking our window every now and then to see whether the curtain moved. “Well, boys,” I’d say wistfully once the curtain flinched, “I gotta go. Sorry. Bye.”

Dinnertime!

And the guys would always beg, “But Petr, you’ll come after dinner too, right?” Sometimes I did, but oftentimes I had to stay home. In other words: dinner, a bit of TV, shower and bed.

My ice hockey career was over before it began, and I started to play football. I was six years old and the training sessions were held at the Škodovka Plzeň base. Since that moment, football was the sole centre of my life, my main focus, every day, every hour, always.

Maybe you won’t believe me, but I used to play in the midfield, as left-winger. I knew nobody would steal that post from me, because there weren’t many lefties on the team. And don’t be fooled, I wasn’t klutzy, I knew what to do with a ball. I scored goals, I had assists. I probably wouldn’t have become a top league midfielder, but who could have known?

I tried really hard on the left side, but at the same time I was eyeing the space where nobody seemed to want to be. I was fascinated by the goal, this huge thing towering at the back of the field. Three bars and a massive hole between them into which you scored goals. Sometimes during practice I would get in and tried my hand at goalkeeping. I admit, I enjoyed being alone against all the other players.

The goal is like a large cage. The frame has always been 24 feet wide and 8 feet high, and when you’re small and just beginning to play football, you can’t jump high enough to touch the crossbar and running from one goalpost to the other takes you half an hour. But I started to feel really good in the goal. Every opportunity I had, I got in the goal to have some fun.