Tomas Cerny – Behind the Gloves

Last week I was back home in the Czech Republic for the wedding of one of my best friends.

I may write another time about our friendship, the years in Olomouc, Sigma, school, all the shared memories and what that group of friends meant to me. That is a story of its own.

But being back home opened something else in me.

It made me reflect on where I come from. On the beginnings of my football journey. On Králíky. On my childhood, my friends, my family, sport, coaches and the roots I grew from.

Before the bigger clubs, the moves, professional football, foreign countries, stadiums, pressure and all the stories that came later, there was one small town under the mountains.

Králíky.

And that is where it all started for me.

My first training session

I still remember it. My first proper football training session.

My dad, Petr, brought me to my first training sometime in January 1990. I was five years old.

It was the middle of winter, and in the town where I grew up, winters were fierce. Králíky in winter was a proper winter. Snow everywhere. Snow on the roads, snow piled up by the pavements, snow on the roofs, snow on the football pitch. We could have inches of snow for months, sometimes from December until late March. The temperatures would sometimes drop to minus 25 degrees Celsius, and that cold was part of normal life.

You remember the sound of boots on packed snow. You remember frozen fingers, red cheeks, wet gloves drying on radiators, and coming home into a warm apartment after being outside for hours.

So my first football session was not outside on grass. It was in an old-style games hall.

I still remember the feel of it. Wooden floor, echoing noise, boys running around, and old gymnastics equipment used as goals. I think we used vaulting horses, or some similar equipment that normally belonged in PE lessons. For us, they were football goals.

The youngest age group in our local football club was under-10s. In Czech, we called it “elévové”. I was only five, the youngest one there, and I wasn’t very mobile. Some would probably describe me as being on the chubby side, but nothing extreme.

So it was decided I would be in goal.

And that is how my career started.

I did pretty well and established myself as a goalkeeper for the under-10 team. I loved football. I enjoyed throwing myself about. I liked making saves. I liked being part of the team.

But there were also moments I did not enjoy as much.

Playing with and against older boys, much taller and stronger than me, brought a bit of anxiety at times. It was always a challenging environment, and I didn’t want to mess it up for my teammates.

I think that is something that stayed with me throughout my career: the pressure not to let my teammates, coaches and family down. It was not something that was necessarily put on me. It was something I put on myself.

I remember one particular occasion in Králíky. I was six, playing for the under-10s, and we were playing against a strong opposition. I was losing a lot of goals. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but at some point it became too much.

I left the pitch and went to hide behind a big wall, which was part of the outdoor cinema next to the football pitch.

The game had to be stopped.

The referee, my coach, my mum and my dad all had to come and persuade me to go back in goal, otherwise the game couldn’t continue.

Eventually, I went back and finished the game.

There were other occasions when I felt like running away, but I never did it again. If I was going to play the game I loved, I had to learn how to deal with it.

Looking back now, I think that was probably one of my first lessons as a goalkeeper.

You cannot always escape the pressure. Sometimes you have to stand there, even when you are scared, even when things are going badly, even when you feel completely helpless. You have to find a way to carry on.

That feeling followed me into bigger stadiums later in life. Different countries, different leagues, different crowds, but the feeling was sometimes the same. As a goalkeeper, you are part of the team, but in certain moments you are also alone. When the ball goes in, you feel it. When you make a mistake, you cannot hide from it. You have to learn to go again.

Maybe that started for me behind that wall in Králíky.

I also played other sports.

My big passion was ice hockey, where I played in goal and also as a defender. Usually, I played in goal with older teams. I played in the under-19 league when I was only 11.

This became a theme when I was growing up. Because I was from a small town, there were not many goalkeepers. And honestly, not many people wanted to do it. So they often asked me to play up. Sometimes a couple of years up, and sometimes there was a big age gap between me and the players I came up against.

I think this helped me a lot.

I had to challenge myself all the time. I had to match the physicality of older boys. I had to be more skilful. I had to find ways to cope with the challenge.

There were times when I would train with the under-10s, then the under-14s, and then the adult first team would come onto the pitch and ask if I could stay to save some shots.

I also played tennis, cycled a lot, played in the forest and did a lot of things outside with my mates. We often came home only when Mum or Dad were looking for us, or when it got dark.

We also played street hockey and had many fierce matches. Boys from different streets played against each other on the road, under the street lamps. Sometimes our dads and uncles joined us too.

I feel like, nowadays, that level of physical activity for children is not there in the same way anymore.

Doing all those different sports helped me develop more holistically. Reactions, speed, stamina, power, problem solving in different situations, courage, coordination — I did not know it at the time, but all of it was helping me.

It was amazing to grow up in a small town where everyone knew each other, and where there were a good number of boys who enjoyed sport as much as I did. Without all the boys I had around me, I would not have developed the way I did.

I also did a lot of winter sports, especially cross-country skiing and downhill skiing.

My brother, Miroslav, who is 11 years older than me, started taking me skiing from a very young age. He later became a full-time mountain rescue worker, and I spent a lot of time at the mountain rescue hut with him during the winter months.

He was also a passionate mountain climber and had a paragliding parachute. I still remember it hanging across the whole bedroom we shared in our two-bedroom apartment.

That was part of my childhood too.

Football, ice hockey, skiing, mountains, forests, street hockey, bikes, friends, snow, cold winters. Sport and the outdoors were everywhere.

I also had amazing support, not only from my family.

My dad, Petr, took me to training sessions, travelled to games and was very passionate about me playing sport. He was there on the side of the pitch, and that mattered.

He also did all the little things that children often don’t notice properly at the time. Carrying my ice hockey equipment, helping me with my skates and football boots, making sure I had what I needed, getting me to places on time. Ice hockey kit was heavy, especially for a young boy, and my dad was always there with it. At the time, it just felt normal. Now I understand that it was love, shown through time, effort and small practical things.

My mum, Olga, made tremendous sacrifices. She took on extra work so we had enough money to support my and my brother’s interests. A lot of money was spent on my ice hockey equipment, for example. Money we would not have had if she didn’t work extra hours.

She also did everything at home. Keeping the apartment clean, cooking all the meals, baking, making clothes. I don’t know how she managed to do all of that on top of her two jobs.

I remember coming home and there was always freshly made food. There were soups, proper meals, cakes, buchty, baked things, something warm, something ready. After school, after training, or after spending hours outside, we were hungry, and there was always food at home. At the time, again, you think that is just normal. Only later do you realise how much work was behind that.

She’s incredible.

I also had some great coaches in my boys’ club in Králíky. People who sacrificed a lot of their free time to help us get better at football. I can’t name them all, but I must mention Mr Zezulka, who was my coach in both football and ice hockey, and Mr Suček, who was my first coach at under-10s.

Sometimes they were demanding. Sometimes they shouted at me. But that was all part of the process, and I believe they helped me tremendously.

I appreciate that even more now. When you are a child, you don’t fully understand that these people are giving up evenings, weekends and time with their own families so that children can play sport. They stand in the cold, organise training, pick teams, deal with parents, look after children and try to help young players improve.

Without people like that, local sport does not exist.

I will forever be grateful to them for giving their time.

This is how it all started for me.

A lot of sport.

A happy childhood in a small town.

Great support from my family and people around me.

And a boy from Králíky who somehow ended up in goal.