Tomas Cerny – Behind the Gloves

Next came Europe.

We travelled to Slovenia to play Mura, a fairly unknown team compared with CSKA. On paper, we were expected to go through comfortably. That was the feeling around the club anyway. CSKA were the bigger name, the bigger club, and this was a tie people expected us to handle.

For me, it was more than just another game.

It was going to be my first proper appearance in European competition.

I had experienced European football before, but in a different way. As a young goalkeeper at Sigma Olomouc, I travelled with the squad for some big European nights. Real Zaragoza in Spain. Hamburg in Germany. And most memorably, Borussia Dortmund.

Dortmund was something else.

The stadium, the noise, the colour, and that famous Yellow Wall behind one of the goals. When you see it as a young player, it stays with you. It feels less like a stand and more like a living thing. A wall of people, colour and sound.

Those trips were incredible experience for a teenager, but I was only on the bench.

This was different.

Now it was my turn to start.

The first leg in Slovenia was not very eventful. We came away with a 0-0 draw. For me, that was fine. I had kept a clean sheet in my first European start, and we all felt confident that we would finish the job back in Sofia.

Before the return leg, we trained at the national stadium.

That session was interesting.

When I walked into the changing room, there were several new players sitting there who I had never seen before. No explanation. No warning. Just new faces.

One of them was Rais M’Bolhi, a Paris-born goalkeeper who represented Algeria internationally. He would later have an outstanding World Cup in 2014, including a man-of-the-match performance against Germany in the last 16.

Seeing another goalkeeper arrive like that, the day before a European game, did not exactly fill me with confidence.

No one told us what was happening.

No one explained anything.

You just had to get on with it.

The next day, I started in goal.

We were the better team. Much the better team. We created chance after chance, and the game should have been finished long before half-time. It could easily have been four or five.

But football does not work like that.

It was still only 1-0 going into the last part of the game.

Then, around the 80th minute, Mura scored.

1-1.

We pushed, but we could not find another goal.

And just like that, we were out.

Knocked out on away goals by a team everyone expected us to beat.

The List

It was a massive upset. And for me, it was the first real sign that life at CSKA was not going to be simple.

The next day, I was travelling back to Glasgow.

I had already booked the flights before the second leg. The plan was simple. Go back, pack more of my things, and then bring Laura over to Sofia so she could get a feel for the place. We needed to start looking for somewhere to live. This was not just a football move anymore. It was becoming our life.

But after the Mura game, everything felt different.

On the journey back, I started browsing Bulgarian news articles about the match. I was still practising how to read the Cyrillic alphabet. At first, it looked completely different, but once I started to decipher the letters, the words were not as impossible as they seemed. Bulgarian is a Slavic language, like Czech, so there were similarities. Slowly, I could work out enough to understand what I was reading.

Then I saw it.

An article saying that ten CSKA players had been released by the club after the catastrophic result against Mura.

I could not believe it.

My first thought was, Am I one of them?

There was no real reason for me to think that. I had played well in both games. I had kept a clean sheet in the first leg and only conceded one goal over 180 minutes. There was not much I could have done about the goal we conceded.

But in football, especially in situations like that, logic does not always protect you.

You never know.

I called my agent’s contact in Bulgaria and asked what was going on.

He said he was not sure.

That did not help.

So the journey back to Glasgow was not an easy one. I was supposed to be going home to pack more things and prepare Laura for life in Sofia. Instead, I was sitting there wondering whether I would even be returning.

Later, I found out the full list of players who had been released.

There were internationals on it. Established players. Big names.

Rais M’Bolhi was one of them. He had signed, arrived, and then was released the next day without playing a single minute.

I was not on the list.

That was a relief.

But it did not exactly make me feel secure.

If anything, it confirmed what I was starting to understand.

At CSKA, anything could happen.