How did it even happen that the versatile midfielder, who actually only flashed in Prague’s Slavia in the early eighties, made his mark in Slovakia? Where and when did such strong functionary genes awaken in him that he sat in the chair of general director and then vice president in Bratislava’s Slovan? What paths led him to the generality of Slovak football?
“I was always a leader in the team, my teammates trusted me, I was also an enterprising person and I experienced a lot in football. When I returned to Dunajská Streda after a one-year engagement in Budapest, the club’s president at the time came and said that I could help him. So I played, and in the process it started to function. One of my first actions was to hire coach Ládi Škorpil after Dušan Radolský left Dunajská for Cheb in his ninety-third year,” recalls Petr Kašpar about the beginnings of his official career, which then continued in Bratislava.
Petr KašparBorn: June 26, 1960Football career: AFK Kolín, VTJ Karlovy Vary, 1983 – 1984 Slavia Prague, 1985 – 1986 AFK Kolín, 1986 – 1991 DAC Dunajská Streda, 1991 – 1992 Újpest FC, 1992 – 1995 DAC Dunajská Streda. League starts : Slavia 17, Dunajská Streda 183 Greatest achievements: winning the Slovak and then the Czechoslovak Cup with Dunajská Streda in 1987, winning the Hungarian Cup with Újpest FC in 1992
“After the end of the federal league, the owner of Artmedia Petržalka, Ivan Kmotrík, approached me and I accepted his challenge. At first with the fact that I was just going to try it, in the end it turned into a collaboration lasting twenty-five years. In Petržalka, we not only won the league title, but under the leadership of coach Vlado Weiss, they also made it to the Champions League. And we won seven points in the basic group. Today, something similar sounds unbelievable,” the Czech footballer and official in the Slovak service returned two decades into the past.
Photo: Zdeněk Pavlis, Sport.cz
In Slovan Bratislava, Petr Kašpar held the position of general director and, for example, vice president of the club.
“In 2008, Ivan Kmotrík decided to buy Slovan. I stayed in Petržalka for two more years, but then I followed him and in 2010 I started at Tehelné poli as general manager. I think we’ve done a good job there over the years. After all, the collection of championship titles speaks for itself,” Petr Kašpar tells his story, about which not much is known in the Czech Republic. “I also founded the League Union in Slovakia, I was elected to the executive committee of the Slovak Football Association. And I sit in it all the time. As the oldest of them all.’
What was and is the owner of Slovan Ivan Kmotrík, about whom a lot has been written and even more hinted at? Petr Kašpar answers this in Kopačky na hrebík.
“A tough businessman, of course. But he likes football. When a person explained to him what kind of player we needed for the team, he put it on me and bought him. It was written and talked about that we are also connected by business activities, but I just smile at that. We dealt with some activities together, but he is somewhere completely different from me,” Petr Kašpar told the Sport.cz microphone.
Of course, in Kopačky na hříběk, talk also turned to the mentioned entrepreneurial activities of Petr Kašpar, as well as to his active playing career.
“I played for coach Máčala in Slavia, but then Jareš came, who preferred older players, so I returned to Kolín. That’s where the squires from Dunajská Streda found me. Hungarian counts who paid well, so I went and they employed me in the JRD there. Originally, I thought I was going to Slovakia for two or three seasons, but in the end I have been there for thirty-eight years. I can’t even count how much time I spent on the ‘number one’ when traveling between Dunajská and Kolín,” he describes the regular commuting between his home in Kolín and his second home in Dunajská Streda.
Photo: archive of the author (Zdeněk Pavlis), Sport.cz
Petr Kašpar in the Dunajská Streda jersey (right) in a duel with the famous player Radim Nečas.
He experienced the best years of his football career on Rye Island. They were crowned by victory in the Czechoslovak Cup final over Sparta and subsequent matches in the European Cup. For example, with Bayern Munich…
“At that time it was a national holiday for Dunajská. They drove piles of dirt around the pitch so that it could reach all the fans who wanted to see our match with Bayern. We had an excellent team that played at the forefront of the federal league. In one season, we were in first place five rounds before the end, but the finish didn’t work out for us. Even so, we made the whole Žitný ostrov crazy about football. We went out to train a little beyond Dunajská and as soon as we stopped somewhere, they threw peppers, melons, and everything that grew in the fields into the bus,” Petr Kašpar told how it used to be in the days of the federal league.
Photo: Zdeněk Pavlis, Sport.cz
Petr Kašpar is always at home at the National Football Stadium, which is the home of Slovan Bratislava.
He also talked about the coaches he played under and who he subsequently brought to Slovakia as an official, his teammates with whom he played, but also about his engagement with the Hungarian club Újpest FC or the upcoming European championship in Germany, where, of course, as an official of the Slovak Football Association goes out.
“Belgium, Ukraine, Romania, a very difficult group. But we have a very well-made team, so with a bit of luck we can advance,” Petr Kašpar would like both Slovaks and Czechs to advance to the round of 16. The cosmopolitan in him simply cannot be denied, which his confession in Kopačky na hřebík only confirms.
Ancient and quite recent history in the narrative of football personalities.
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