A woman stands in front of the headquarters of the Football Association of the Czech Republic (FAČR) in Strahov, Prague, on October 16, 2020.
Čestlice (near Prague) – General meeting of the Football Association of the Czech Republic today authorized the executive committee to start negotiations with Sparta Prague regarding the sports use of the Strahov area. The reigning league champion offered to pay for the construction of a new national stadium at his own expense, which, according to the estimates of Letenské CEO František Čupra, would cost roughly four billion crowns.
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Today, at the end of the meeting in Čestlice u Prahy, the executive committee presented to the general meeting a proposal for the next course of action regarding the dilapidated Evžen Rošický stadium in Strahov, which was one of the main points of the meeting. During the year, the football “government” unanimously agreed on the sports use of Strahov, either as a training center, a new stadium, or both together. She spoke out against the sale of the land.
The general meeting subsequently authorized the executive committee to develop variants of sports use. At the same time, she instructed him to start negotiations with Sparta, which had previously repeated the offer in front of the delegates through Čupra's mouth.
“I want to ask the executive committee to start negotiations with us. We don't have to come to a concrete conclusion right away, but we want to have the opportunity to talk about it with the committee. Sparta Prague offers to ensure the construction of the national stadium and its maintenance and repairs at its own expense. The land will remain FAČR, we will pay the annual rent. The stadium would be ours. At the moment it is premature to talk about what exactly the annual rent is, but we had tens of millions of crowns in our thoughts,” said Čupr.
“A plus would be a reward for every match of the adult national team. FAČR was entitled to sky boxes, VIP seats for partners, branding for its sponsors and the like. We estimate the costs to be around four billion crowns. We are ready to take them from our own pockets and build the stadium,” added the Spartan official.
The executive committee has the task of informing about the next procedure at the next general meeting. “The committee has been dealing with this for two years. First, it had to resolve a whole range of non-financial and financial obligations. In the second year, it assessed 12 different options for dealing with the campus, and narrowed it down to sports options. Sparta signaled its interest, but it was not possible to carry out the negotiations because the conditions must be the same for everyone, transparent,” noted FAČR chairman Fousek, according to whom there have not yet been discussions about the capacity of a potential national stadium.
“Even if it wasn't in the resolution, we would still negotiate with Sparta. That task it sounds clear – we have to prepare variants of the solution by the next general meeting. We cannot say today whether the solution is Sparta or another,” added FAČR vice-chairman Jiří Šidliák.
Evžen Rošického Stadium is currently in a state of disrepair and has not been used since this year. Even last year, the Czech national team and other teams trained on it. The FAČR continues to cover costs in the order of millions of crowns per year for its maintenance.
The general meeting approved the doubling of membership fees for next year – adults will now pay 400 crowns and persons under 18 and over 70 will pay 200 crowns. Half will be available to the executive committee, but the other half will remain with the FAČR for the time being, as the delegates did not agree on how to distribute 50 percent of the funds. The association currently has 358,436 members.
Due to the vote in the Czech Chamber, the report of the revision and control commission, which stated that the previous management of FAČR had behaved very uneconomically, was also not approved. According to Šidliák, however, from a procedural point of view, disapproval of this report does not mean anything fundamental.
The General Assembly took note of the report of the Technical Director of FAČR Zdenek Psotka on the restructuring of adult competitions. In the past few days, the media speculated that Psotka was leaving the position after just one year, but the official himself did not confirm this. “Not yet,” he said. “There was a lot of media nonsense, Zdeněk Psotka is still the technical director of the football association. He has had a year of good work. We are still negotiating and we have agreed that we will not communicate these things in any way,” said Fousek.
Although the 25th regular general meeting was non-election, it lasted up to seven and a half hours. The program was significantly hampered by the frequent comments of some delegates and debates about the transparency of funding. “I think that there are more things that have been achieved than those that have not been achieved. The winners usually only appear at the election general meeting. The general meeting should undoubtedly be shorter, there were some excesses. Some confuse democracy with anarchy,” said Fousek, who has been the chairman of FAČR for two years.
“Many people tell me that I am not here at UEFA. Nothing like this could ever happen there. The goal must be clear – to get closer to Europe, ” noted Fousek, who was recently elected to the UEFA executive committee.
