"We landed in Kuala Lumpur [Singapore] and all of a sudden this guy walks up to the plane... It still moves me to this day. Such an Indian, turban like thunder. He welcomed us and had a bus ready and took us to a first class hotel where there was a swimming pool. There were waiters at the pool. And he was the hotel where the American soldiers who were fighting the Viet Cong in Vietnam at that time, and they would come here on vacation. So we were just staying in this hotel for free, and prostitutes would come in and lured them. But of course they didn't have anything to lure our boys to, but they didn't know that. There were these bungalows around this lake and suddenly a prostitute would appear on the balcony, stick her ass out and start wiggling it. Nobody came, of course, and we had a lot of fun."
"It was ugly in Australia. We played there in Melbourne and in Adelaide. In Melbourne there was... I'm an honorary member. Then I'll show you the legitimacy. The Czechs had a football club there. Imagine those Czech bitches. We had a contract with them to give us a percentage of the attendance in dollars. So the game was over and they came to pay and brought us Australian dollars instead of American dollars, because they were half as weak. They had a huge argument with me that they just didn't, but I showed them the contract. So that was the first attempt at a cheating. And the second one was in Adelaide, there was, I think, FC Prague [actually Juventus]. I got it there, so you can compare. There, again, they did this cheating to us, that they used to announce at half-time, like to show how interested they were, how many spectators were there. I knew English, so I understood them. Then when they came with the bill, I said, 'Please, how come? You reported that there were so and so many spectators, and now you're billing me for half?' And they said, 'No, no, no. So that was all the Czechs did for us."
"I had to do something about the debt. We had a debt of six million, which was a lot of money back then. Today it's nothing, it's a joke. But that was big money. I started going after the companies we owed back then, and we owed a lot. So I'd go around and say, 'Hey, this new physical education...,' I'd put it on a political note. 'This new physical education needs support. Please, it's the picture of our socialist republic.' They fell for it and wrote us off. So that was my first rescue of Slavia. There were more after that. That's why I said that the renaming was nice, but not the most important thing."
Jiří Vrba was born on 7 July 1930 in Prague, where he and his mother also lived through the Second World War. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German army, his father was arrested and later deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he perished. As a 15-year-old boy, Jiří Vrba joined the Prague Uprising alongside the Vlasov troop. After the end of the war, he entered the business academy in Karlín, but had to leave after the communist coup in 1948 and finished his studies at the business academy in Teplice. From his youth he had a warm relationship with sports and competed in swimming and water polo. After graduation he joined the then Sokol Dynamo Slavia Prague as a swimmer, where he began his later long career. After joining the Slavia club, he began to work as a manager and committee member with the aim of paying off the club, which he eventually managed to do after small steps. Later, also on his initiative, the club regained its original name Slavia Praha. At the end of 1967, he organized a trip around the world with the players, which brought the club great success. After the occupation in August 1968 and the onset of normalisation, Jiří Vrba had to resign from his position as chairman and official. He returned to his civilian profession and took up a position at the State Bank of Czechoslovakia. At the end of the 1980s he retired as an employee of Giro Credit Vienna. In 1989, he was charged with rebuilding the Rotary Club of Czechoslovakia, which he subsequently did and became its president. Jiří Vrba died on March 2, 2024.
Jiří Vrba during his speech at the Old Town Hall during the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the start of Slavia's sporting activities. It was also the second attempt to rename the club, 1958
Jiří Vrba during his speech at the Old Town Hall during the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the start of Slavia's sporting activities. It was also the second attempt to rename the club, 1958
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